Emergent critical phases of the Ashkin-Teller model on the Union-Jack Lattice

TL;DR

This study reveals a novel critical phase in the Ashkin-Teller model on the Union Jack lattice, characterized by BKT boundaries and power-law correlations, driven by frustration and lattice inhomogeneity.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the emergence of a critical phase with BKT features in the Ashkin-Teller model on an inhomogeneous lattice, expanding understanding of phase behavior in frustrated systems.

Findings

Critical line splits into two BKT boundaries.

A critical phase with power-law decay of magnetization appears.

Pseudo-critical points scale as (ln L)^{-2}.

Abstract

The Ashkin-Teller (AT) model is a classic spin model in statistical mechanics. For traditional homogeneous lattices like triangular and kagome lattices, even when frustration exists, the model only has one ferromagnetic-paramagnetic critical line in the $J>0$ and $K<0$ region. However, in this paper, for the Union Jack lattice, where the lattice coordination numbers are 4, 8, and 8 and which also contains a large number of small triangular units, using Metropolis Monte Carlo method, we find that, the critical line of the AT model splits into two Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless(BKT) boundaries, and a critical phase emerges in the intermediate region. This phenomenon is the combined result of frustration, lattice inhomogeneity and the two coupled spin degrees of freedom inherent to the AT model. In detail, the novel critical phase characterized by a power-law decay of magnetization with system size, where the correlation length ratio $\xi/L$ remains finite even in the thermodynamic limit. We also introduce the susceptibility $\widetilde{\chi} = \text{d}\langle m \rangle /\text{d}J$ as a key probe, and through this probe, pseudo-critical points $J_c(L)$ are observed to scale proportionally to $(\ln L)^{-2}$, a behavior consistent with BKT criticality. Since superfluids, superconductors, and supersolids all possess quasi-long-range order and fall into the category of critical phases, our results could also inspire the exploration of such quantum phases.