Magnetic Phase Diagram of the Ferromagnetically Stacked Triangular Ising Antiferromagnet

TL;DR

This paper uses histogram Monte-Carlo simulations to map the magnetic phase diagram of a stacked triangular Ising antiferromagnet, revealing tricritical points and first-order transition lines.

Contribution

It provides detailed finite-size scaling analysis and compares simulation results with mean-field theories for this frustrated magnetic system.

Findings

Identification of a line of tricritical points at low magnetic fields.

Evidence of a first-order transition line at higher fields.

Comparison showing differences between Monte Carlo and mean-field predictions.

Abstract

Histogram Monte-Carlo simulation results are presented for the magnetic-field -- temperature phase diagram of the Ising model on a stacked triangular lattice with antiferromagnetic intraplane and ferromagnetic interplane interactions. Finite-size scaling results for this frustrated system at three points along the paramagnetic transition boundary are presented which strongly suggest a line of triciritcal points at low field and a first-order transition line at higher fields. These results are compared with the corresponding phase diagrams from conventional mean-field theory as well as from the Monte Carlo mean-field calculations of Netz and Berker [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 66}, 377 (1991)].