No Arabic abstract
The spin-1/2 Ising diamond chain in a magnetic field displays a remarkable pseudo-transition whenever it is driven sufficiently close to a ground-state phase boundary between a classical ferrimagnetic phase and a highly degenerate frustrated phase. The pseudo-transition of the spin-1/2 Ising diamond chain relates to intense thermal excitations from a nondegenerate ferrimagnetic ground state to a highly degenerate manifold of excited states with a frustrated character, which are responsible for an anomalous behavior of thermodynamic quantities. Temperature dependences of entropy and specific heat are indeed reminiscent of a temperature-driven phase transition of a discontinuous (entropy) or continuous (specific heat) nature though there are no true singularities of these thermodynamic quantities at a pseudo-critical temperature.
A few paradigmatic one-dimensional lattice-statistical spin models have recently attracted a vigorous scientific interest owing to their peculiar thermodynamic behavior, which is highly reminiscent of a temperature-driven phase transition. The pseudotransitions of one-dimensional lattice-statistical spin models differ from actual phase transitions in several important aspects: the first-order derivatives of the Gibbs free energy such as entropy or magnetization exhibit near a pseudo-transition an abrupt continuous change instead of a true discontinuity, whereas the second-order derivatives of the Gibbs free energy such as specific heat or susceptibility display near a pseudo-transition a vigorous finite peak instead of an actual power-law divergence. In the present chapter we will comprehensively examine a pseudo-critical behavior of the spin-1/2 Ising diamond and tetrahedral chains by a detailed examination of basic magnetothermodynamic quantities such as the entropy, specific heat and susceptibility. It will be demonstrated that density plots of these magnetothermodynamic quantities provide a useful tool for establishing a finite-temperature diagram, which clearly delimits boundaries between individual quasi-phases in spite of a lack of true spontaneous long-range order at any nonzero temperature. It is suggested that a substantial difference between the degeneracies of two ground states of the spin-1/2 Ising diamond and tetrahedral chains is an essential prerequisite for observation of a relevant pseudo-critical behavior in a close vicinity of their ground-state phase boundary.
The mixed spin-(1,1/2) Ising-Heisenberg model on a distorted diamond chain with the spin-1 nodal atoms and the spin-1/2 interstitial atoms is exactly solved by the transfer-matrix method. An influence of the geometric spin frustration and the parallelogram distortion on the ground state, magnetization, susceptibility and specific heat of the mixed-spin Ising-Heisenberg distorted diamond chain are investigated in detail. It is demonstrated that the zero-temperature magnetization curve may involve intermediate plateaus just at zero and one-half of the saturation magnetization. The temperature dependence of the specific heat may have up to three distinct peaks at zero magnetic field and up to four distinct peaks at a non-zero magnetic field. The origin of multipeak thermal behavior of the specific heat is comprehensively studied.
The ground state and thermodynamics of a generalized spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg diamond chain with the second-neighbor interaction between nodal spins are calculated exactly using the mapping method based on the decoration-iteration transformation. Rigorous results for the magnetization, susceptibility, and heat capacity are investigated in dependence on temperature and magnetic field for the frustrated diamond spin chain with the antiferromagnetic Ising and Heisenberg interactions. It is demonstrated that the second-neighbor interaction between nodal spins gives rise to a greater diversity of low-temperature magnetization curves, which may include an intermediate plateau at two-third of the saturation magnetization related to the classical ferrimagnetic (up-up-up-down-up-up-...) ground state with translationally broken symmetry besides an intermediate one-third magnetization plateau reflecting the translationally invariant quantum ferrimagnetic (monomer-dimer) spin arrangement.
By high temperature series expansion, exact diagonalisation and temperature density-matrix renormalisation the magnetic susceptibility $chi(T)$ and the specific heat $C(T)$ of dimerised and frustrated $S=1/2$ chains are computed. All three methods yield reliable results, in particular for not too small temperatures or not too small gaps. The series expansion results are provided in the form of polynomials allowing very fast and convenient fits in data analysis using algebraic programmes. We discuss the difficulty to extract more than two coupling constants from the temperature dependence of $chi(T)$.
The ground state and magnetization process of the mixed spin-(1,1/2) Ising diamond chain is exactly solved by employing the generalized decoration-iteration mapping transformation and the transfer-matrix method. The decoration-iteration transformation is first used in order to establish a rigorous mapping equivalence with the corresponding spin-1 Blume-Emery-Griffiths chain in a non-zero magnetic field, which is subsequently exactly treated within the framework of the transfer-matrix technique. It is shown that the ground-state phase diagram includes just four different ground states and the low-temperature magnetization curve may exhibit an intermediate plateau precisely at one half of the saturation magnetization. Our rigorous results disprove recent Monte Carlo simulations of Zihua Xin et al. [Z. Xin, S. Chen, C. Zhang, J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 324 (2012) 3704], which imply an existence of the other magnetization plateaus at 0.283 and 0.426 of the saturation magnetization.