Conventional description of Unconventional Coulomb-Crystal phase transitions in three-dimensional classical O(N) spin-ice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase transition in a 3D classical O(N) spin-ice model, offering a conventional description based on constrained order parameters and analyzing its universality class through epsilon and 1/N expansions.

Contribution

It provides a new, more conventional theoretical framework for describing Coulomb-crystal transitions in spin-ice models, differing from previous CP(1) formalism approaches.

Findings

Identifies a stable fixed point for large N

Uses epsilon and 1/N expansions to analyze universality class

Proposes a conventional description based on constrained order parameters

Abstract

We study the phase transition between the high temperature Coulomb phase and the low temperature staggered crystal phase in three dimensional classical O(N) spin-ice model. Compared with the previously proposed CP(1) formalism on the Coulomb-crystal transition of the classical dimer model, our description based on constrained order parameter is more conventional, due to a fundamental difference between the O(N) and the dimer model. A systematic epsilon and 1/N expansion are used to study the universality class of the phase transition, and a stable fixed point is found based on our calculations for large enough N.