Modulated phases and devil's staircases in a layered mean-field version of the ANNNI model

DOI10.1016/J.PHYSA.2014.04.045MaRDI QIDQ1782940zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors E. S. Nascimento, J. P. de Lima, S. R. Salinas

Publication date 20 September 2018

Published in Physica A (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.5691

zbMATH Keywords

Lifshitz pointdevil's staircaseANNNI modelmodulated phases

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Lattice systems (Ising, dimer, Potts, etc.) and systems on graphs arising in equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B20)

Abstract: We investigate the phase diagram of a spin-$1/2$ Ising model on a cubic lattice, with competing interactions between nearest and next-nearest neighbors along an axial direction, and fully connected spins on the sites of each perpendicular layer. The problem is formulated in terms of a set of noninteracting Ising chains in a position-dependent field. At low temperatures, as in the standard mean-feild version of the Axial-Next-Nearest-Neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model, there are many distinct spatially commensurate phases that spring from a multiphase point of infinitely degenerate ground states. As temperature increases, we confirm the existence of a branching mechanism associated with the onset of higher-order commensurate phases. We check that the ferromagnetic phase undergoes a first-order transition to the modulated phases. Depending on a parameter of competition, the wave number of the striped patterns locks in rational values, giving rise to a devil's staircase. We numerically calculate the Hausdorff dimension $D_0$ associated with these fractal structures, and show that $D_0$ increases with temperature but seems to reach a limiting value smaller than $D_0=1$.

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