Quantum mechanically driven structural-spin glass in two dimensions at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a quantum-mechanically driven glass phase in a two-dimensional Ising model at finite temperature, combining structural and spin glass features due to quantum fluctuations and frustration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 2D glass phase driven by quantum effects, involving a unique mechanism of domain formation and emergent randomness in a frustrated quantum spin system.

Findings

Discovery of a 2D glass phase at finite temperature

Coexistence of structural and spin glass features

Identification of a multi-valley free-energy landscape

Abstract

In magnetic materials, spins sometimes freeze into spatially disordered glassy states. Glass forming liquids or structural glasses are found very often in three dimensions. However, in two dimensions(2D) it is believed that both spin glass and structural glass can never exist at a finite temperature because they are destroyed by thermal fluctuations. Using a large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulation, we discover a quantum-mechanically driven 2D glass phase at finite temperatures. Our platform is an Ising spin model with a quantum transverse field on a frustrated triangular lattice. How the present glass phase is formed is understood by the following three steps. First, by the interplay of geometrical frustration and quantum fluctuation, part of the spins spontaneously form an antiferromagnetic honeycomb spin-superstructure. Then, small randomness in the bond interaction works as a relevant perturbation to this superstructure and breaks it up into {\it domains}, making it a structural glass. The glassiness of the superstructure, in turn, generates an emergent random magnetic field acting on the remaining fluctuating spins and freezes them. The shape of domains thus formed depends sensitively on the quenching process, which is one of the characteristic features of glass, originating from a multi-valley free-energy landscape. The present system consists only of {\it a single} bistable Ising degree of freedom, which naturally does not become a structural glass alone nor a spin glass alone. Nevertheless, a glass having both types of nature emerges in the form of coexisting two-component glasses, algebraic structural-glass and long-range ordered spin-glass. This new concept of glass-forming mechanism opens a way to realize functional glasses even in low dimensional systems.