Topological Devil's staircase in a constrained kagome Ising antiferromagnet

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Rufino, Afonso, Nyckees, Samuel, Colbois, Jeanne, Mila, Frédéric
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Rufino, Afonso
Nyckees, Samuel
Colbois, Jeanne
Mila, Frédéric
author_facet Rufino, Afonso
Nyckees, Samuel
Colbois, Jeanne
Mila, Frédéric
contents We show that the constrained Ising model on the kagome lattice with infinite first and third neighbor couplings undergoes an infinite series of thermal first-order transitions at which, as in the Kasteleyn transition, linear defects of infinite length condense. However, their density undergoes abrupt jumps because of the peculiar structure of the low temperature phase, which is only partially ordered and hosts a finite density of zero-energy domain walls. The number of linear defects between consecutive zero-energy domain walls is quantized to integer values, leading to a devil's staircase of topological origin. By contrast to the devil's staircase of the ANNNI and related models, the wave-vector is not fixed to commensurate values inside each phase.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_05889
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Topological Devil's staircase in a constrained kagome Ising antiferromagnet
Rufino, Afonso
Nyckees, Samuel
Colbois, Jeanne
Mila, Frédéric
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Statistical Mechanics
We show that the constrained Ising model on the kagome lattice with infinite first and third neighbor couplings undergoes an infinite series of thermal first-order transitions at which, as in the Kasteleyn transition, linear defects of infinite length condense. However, their density undergoes abrupt jumps because of the peculiar structure of the low temperature phase, which is only partially ordered and hosts a finite density of zero-energy domain walls. The number of linear defects between consecutive zero-energy domain walls is quantized to integer values, leading to a devil's staircase of topological origin. By contrast to the devil's staircase of the ANNNI and related models, the wave-vector is not fixed to commensurate values inside each phase.
title Topological Devil's staircase in a constrained kagome Ising antiferromagnet
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05889