Antiferromagnetism in two-dimensional quasicrystals

Abstract

Abstract Quasiperiodic structures possess long range positional order, but are freed of constraints imposed by translational invariance. For spins interacting via Heisenberg couplings, one may expect therefore to find novel magnetic configurations in such structures. We have studied magnetic properties for simple two dimensional models, as a first step towards understanding experimentally studied magnetic quasicrystals such as the Zn–Mg–R(rare earth) compounds. We analyse properties of the antiferromagnetic groundstate and magnon excitation modes for bipartite tilings such as the octagonal and Penrose tilings. In the absence of frustration, one has an inhomogeneous Neel-ordered ground state, with local quantum fluctuations of the local staggered magnetic order parameter. We study the spin wave spectrum and wavefunctions of such antiferromagnets within the linear spin wave approximation. Some results for spin-spin correlations in these systems are discussed.