Critical Exponents for the Ferromagnetism in Colossal Magnetoresistance Manganites

Critical phenomena of ferromagnetic transition in colossal magnetoresistance manganites are theoretically studied. Concerning the critical exponents for this transition, there still remains controversy among experimental results. In order to clarify intrinsic physics of the manganites through a comparison with theoretical prediction, we investigate the critical phenomena of double-exchange models by using finite-size scaling analysis on unbiased numerical results. As a result, we show that the critical exponents of the ferromagnetic transition of the three-dimensional double-exchange model is consistent with those of the Heisenberg model, but are distinct from the mean-field one.Comment: 3pages including 3 figures, submitted to Proc. ICNS 200

Phase Diagram of the Kitaev-type Model on a Decorated Honeycomb Lattice in the Isolated Dimer Limit

An effective model in the isolated dimer limit of the Kitaev-type model on a decorated honeycomb lattice is investigated at finite temperature. The ground state of this model is exactly shown to be a chiral spin liquid with spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry. We elaborate the finite-temperature phase diagram by using the mean-field approximation and Monte Carlo simulation. We find that the phase transition between the high-temperature paramagnetic phase and the low-temperature chiral spin liquid phase is always of second order in the Monte Carlo results, although a tricritical point appears in the mean-field phase diagram. The finite-size scaling analysis of the Monte Carlo data indicates that the phase transition belongs to the two-dimensional Ising universality class.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Orbital and magnetic transitions in geometrically-frustrated vanadium spinels -- Monte Carlo study of an effective spin-orbital-lattice coupled model --

We present our theoretical and numerical results on thermodynamic properties and the microscopic mechanism of two successive transitions in vanadium spinel oxides $A$V$_2$O$_4$ ($A$=Zn, Mg, or Cd) obtained by Monte Carlo calculations of an effective spin-orbital-lattice model in the strong correlation limit. Geometrical frustration in the pyrochlore lattice structure of V cations suppresses development of spin and orbital correlations, however, we find that the model exhibits two transitions at low temperatures. First, a discontinuous transition occurs with an orbital ordering assisted by the tetragonal Jahn-Teller distortion. The orbital order reduces the frustration in spin exchange interactions, and induces antiferromagnetic correlations in one-dimensional chains lying in the perpendicular planes to the tetragonal distortion. Secondly, at a lower temperature, a three-dimensional antiferromagnetic order sets in continuously, which is stabilized by the third-neighbor interaction among the one-dimensional antiferromagnetic chains. Thermal fluctuations are crucial to stabilize the collinear magnetic state by the order-by-disorder mechanism. The results well reproduce the experimental data such as transition temperatures, temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility, changes of the entropy at the transitions, and the magnetic ordering structure at low temperatures. Quantum fluctuation effect is also examined by the linear spin wave theory at zero temperature. The staggered moment in the ground state is found to be considerably reduced from saturated value, and reasonably agrees with the experimental data.Comment: 22 pages, 23 figure

Phase competition in the double-exchange model on the frustrated pyrochlore lattice

Competition between the ferromagnetic double-exchange interaction and the super-exchange antiferromagnetic interaction is theoretically studied in the presence of geometrical frustration. As increasing the super-exchange interaction, the ferromagnetic metal becomes unstable, and is taken over by a cooperative paramagnetic metal, in sharp contrast with a discontinuous transition to the antiferromagnetic insulator in the absence of frustration. In the critical region, the system exhibits a peculiar temperature-independent behavior with highly incoherent transport, suggesting a large residual entropy at low temperatures. We discuss the relevance of the results to the pressure-induced behaviors in Mo pyrochlore oxides [S. Iguchi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 136407 (2009)].Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let