Phase transition of the three-dimensional chiral Ginzburg-Landau model -- search for the chiral phase

TL;DR

This study investigates the phase transition in a three-dimensional chiral Ginzburg-Landau model, combining variational analysis and Monte Carlo simulations, and finds that the chiral phase is unlikely to exist in the parameter range suggested by earlier theories.

Contribution

The paper extends previous variational analysis by including first-order transitions and performs Monte Carlo simulations to critically assess the existence of the chiral phase.

Findings

First-order transition reduces chiral phase stability

Monte Carlo simulations find no evidence of the chiral phase

Chiral phase, if present, is confined to an extremely narrow temperature range

Abstract

Nature of the phase transition of regularly frustrated vector spin systems in three dimensions is investigated based on a Ginzburg-Landau-type effective Hamiltonian. On the basis of the variational analysis of this model, Onoda et al recently suggested the possible occurrence of a chiral phase, where the vector chirality exhibits a long-range order without the long-range order of the spin [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 027206 (2007)]. In the present paper, we elaborate their analysis by considering the possibility of a first-order transition which was not taken into account in their analysis. We find that the first-order transition indeed occurs within the variational approximation, which significantly reduces the stability range of the chiral phase, while the chiral phase still persists in a restricted parameter range. Then, we perform an extensive Monte Carlo simulation focusing on such a parameter range. Contrary to the variational result, however, we do not find any evidence of the chiral phase. The range of the chiral phase, if any, is estimated to be less than 0.1% in the temperature width.