Phase diagram of the XXZ pyrochlore model from pseudo-Majorana functional renormalization group

Abstract

We calculate the magnetic phase diagram of the spin-1/2 nearest neighbor XXZ pyrochlore model using the pseudo-Majorana functional renormalization group in the temperature flow formalism. Our phase diagram as a function of temperature and coupling ratio, allowing both longitudinal and transverse couplings to be ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic, reveals a large nonmagnetic regime at low temperatures, which includes the quantum spin ice phase near the antiferromagnetic Ising model, as well as the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg and XY models. We are able to detect magnetic phase transitions via critical finite size scaling down to temperatures two orders of magnitude smaller than the spin interactions, demonstrating the remarkably good performance of our method upon approaching the ground state. Specifically, the low-temperature transition from the zero-flux quantum spin ice phase into the transverse ferromagnetic phase shows very good agreement with previous quantum Monte Carlo results. Comparing our findings with classical results, we identify a quantum order-by-disorder effect near the antiferromagnetic XY model. In magnetically disordered regimes, we find characteristic patterns of broadened pinch points in the spin structure factor and investigate their evolution when approaching magnetically ordered phases. We also compute linear responses to lattice symmetry breaking perturbations and identify a possible lattice nematic ground state of the antiferromagnetic XY model.