Magnon Condensation in Dimerized Antiferromagnets with Spin-Orbit Coupling

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spin-orbit coupling influences magnon Bose-Einstein condensation in dimerized antiferromagnets, revealing new magnetic phases and critical behaviors under magnetic fields through theoretical modeling and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a spin model with spin-orbit interactions on a distorted honeycomb lattice and analyzes the resulting magnetic orders and phase transitions using variational Monte Carlo and spin-wave theory.

Findings

Out-of-plane magnetic fields induce various magnetic orders regardless of ground state.

Spin-orbit coupling alters the critical properties of field-driven phase transitions.

The phase transition behavior differs from conventional magnon BEC due to spin-orbit effects.

Abstract

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of triplet excitations triggered by a magnetic field, sometimes called magnon BEC, in dimerized antiferromagnets gives rise to a long-range antiferromagnetic order in the plane perpendicular to the applied magnetic field. To explore the effects of spin-orbit coupling on magnon condensation, we study a spin model on a distorted honeycomb lattice with dimerized Heisenberg exchange ($J$ terms) and uniform off-diagonal exchange ($\Gamma'$ terms) interactions. Via variational Monte Carlo calculations and spin-wave theory, we find that an out-of-plane magnetic field can induce different types of long-range magnetic orders, no matter if the ground state is a non-magnetic dimerized state or an ordered N\'{e}el state. Furthermore, the critical properties of field-driven phase transitions in the presence of spin-orbit couplings, as illustrated from spin-wave spectrum and interpreted by effective field theory, can be different from the conventional magnon BEC. Our study is helpful to understand the rich phases of spin-orbit coupled antiferromagnets induced by magnetic fields.