Taming spin susceptibilities in frustrated quantum magnets: Mean-field form and approximate nature of the quantum-to-classical correspondence

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates the quantum-to-classical correspondence in frustrated quantum magnets, revealing its approximate nature and connection to mean-field approximations, through resummed diagrammatic perturbation theory.

Contribution

It provides an analytical understanding of the weak breakdown of QCC at fourth order and links it to the accuracy of static correlator approximations by mean-field theory.

Findings

QCC breaks weakly at fourth order in J/T

Static correlators are well approximated by a renormalized mean-field form

Partial diagrammatic cancellations explain the success of mean-field approximations

Abstract

In frustrated magnetism, the empirically found quantum-to-classical correspondence (QCC) matches the real-space static susceptibility pattern of a quantum spin-$1/2$ model with its classical counterpart computed at a certain elevated temperature. This puzzling relation was observed via bold line diagrammatic Monte Carlo simulations in dimensions two and three. The matching was within error bars and seemed valid down to the lowest accessible temperatures $T$ about an order of magnitude smaller than the exchange coupling $J$. Here, we employ resummed spin diagrammatic perturbation theory to show analytically that the QCC breaks weakly at fourth order in $J/T$ and provide the approximate mapping between classical and quantum temperatures. Our treatment further reveals that QCC is an indication of the surprising accuracy with which static correlators can be approximated by a simple renormalized mean-field form. We illustrate this for all models discussed in the context of QCC so far, including a recent example of the $S=1$ material $\mathrm{K}_2\mathrm{Ni}_2(\mathrm{SO}_4)_3$. The success of the mean-field form is traced back to partial diagrammatic cancellations.