Quantum phases of a frustrated spin-1 system: The 5/7 skewed ladder

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum phases of a frustrated spin-1 skewed ladder system, revealing four distinct ground state phases and the presence of spin currents due to symmetry breaking, using advanced numerical methods.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of the phase diagram of a frustrated spin-1 ladder with novel ground states and symmetry-breaking phenomena.

Findings

Identification of four distinct ground state phases.

Discovery of spin current at specific interaction strengths.

Reentrant nonmagnetic phase between magnetic phases.

Abstract

The quantum phases in a spin-1 skewed ladder system formed by alternately fusing five- and seven-membered rings are studied numerically using the exact diagonalization technique up to 16 spins and using the density matrix renormalization group method for larger system sizes. The ladder has a fixed isotropic antiferromagnetic (AF) exchange interaction ($J_2 = 1$) between the nearest-neighbor spins along the legs and a varying isotropic AF exchange interaction ($J_1$) along the rungs. As a function of $J_1$, the system shows many interesting ground states (gs) which vary from different types of nonmagnetic and ferrimagnetic gs. The study of diverse gs properties such as spin gap, spin-spin correlations, spin density and bond order reveal that the system has four distinct phases, namely, the AF phase at small $J_1$; the ferrimagnetic phase with gs spin $S_G = n$ for $1.44 < J_1 < 4.74$ and with $S_G = 2n$ for $J_1 > 5.63$, where $n$ is the number of unit cells; and a reentrant nonmagnetic phase at $4.74 < J_1 < 5.44$. The system also shows the presence of spin current at specific $J_1$ values due to simultaneous breaking of both reflection and spin parity symmetries.