Spin-Glass-Like Ordering in a Frustrated J1-J2 Ising Antiferromagnet on a Honeycomb Lattice

M. Žukoviča, M. Borovskýa, A. Bobáka, T. Balcerzakb, K. Szałowskib aInstitute of Physics, Faculty of Science, P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, Park Angelinum 9, 041 54 Košice, Slovakia bDepartment of Solid State Physics, University of Łódź, Pomorska 149/153, 90-236 Łódź, Poland

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We study the nature of a low-temperature phase in the frustrated honeycomb-lattice Ising model with first- and second-neighbor antiferromagnetic interactions, J1 and J2, respectively, for R=J2/J1>1/4. It is known that for R<1/4 there is a phase transition at low temperatures to the antiferromagnetic phase. Nevertheless, little is known about the critical behavior of the model for R>1/4, except for recent effective field results which detected no phase transition down to zero temperature. Our Monte Carlo results suggest that for R>1/4 there is at least one peculiar phase transition accompanied by a spin-glass-like freezing to a highly degenerate state consisting of frozen domains with stripe-type antiferromagnetic ordering separated by zero-energy domain walls. In spite of the local ordering within the respective domains there is no ordering among them and thus, unlike in the corresponding square-lattice model with R>1/2, there is no conventional magnetic long-range ordering spanning the entire system.

DOI:10.12693/APhysPolA.137.619 topics: Ising antiferromagnet, geometrical frustration, zero-energy domain walls