Chiral universality class behavior of a non-chiral antiferroquadrupole system

TL;DR

This study reveals that a non-chiral antiferroquadrupolar system on a 3D lattice exhibits a chiral universality class, challenging the notion that chirality is essential for such critical behavior, supported by Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that non-chiral quadrupolar systems can belong to the chiral universality class, expanding the understanding of critical behavior beyond chiral antiferromagnets.

Findings

Non-chiral antiferroquadrupolar system exhibits chiral universality class behavior.

Ferroquadrupolar exchange system shows standard critical behavior.

Mapping between different quadrupolar systems supports the universality class assignment.

Abstract

The planar Heisenberg system with antiferroquadrupolar exchange on 3D stacked triangular lattice is shown to belong to the new "chiral" universality class, predicted for chiral antiferromagnets. The present system, however, displays no such chirality, which, according to the currently widely accepted concept, is supposed to be a key ingredient for the new critical behavior. Our claim that the new universality class should not be limited only to the chiral antiferromagnets is based on a simple mapping between the chiral antiferromagnetic and antiferroquadrupolar systems and supported by actual calculations of the transition temperatures and critical indices from finite-size scaling analysis of data issued from Histogram Monte Carlo simulations. In order to demonstrate the existence of two different universality classes in the behavior of quadrupolar systems, the finite-size scaling is also performed for the system with ferroquadrupolar exchange, which, in contrast to the antiferroquadrupolar exchange system case, produced standard critical behavior, as could also be anticipated from the mapping.