2007/03/31 by Karlo Penc, Jean-Baptiste Fouet, J.-B. Fouet +4 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum many-body systems #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.117201
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 117201 (2007) · 5 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2007/06/08 · openalex publication_date 2007/09/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show that Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interactions can substantially modify the phase diagram of spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladders in a magnetic field provided they compete with exchange. For nonfrustrated ladders, they induce a local magnetization along the DM vector that turns the gapless intermediate phase into an Ising phase with broken translational symmetry, while for frustrated ladders, they extend the Ising order of the half-integer plateau to the surrounding gapless phases of the purely Heisenberg case. Implications for experimental ladder and dimer systems are discussed.