Calculation of ground-state entropies of highly frustrated systems on fractal lattices

Abstract

The extensive ground-state entropy of frustrated systems on fractal lattices is investigated. Two methods of calculation are proposed, namely, recursive and factorization approaches. In the recursive approach the calculation is based on exact recursion relations for the total number of ground states. The latter procedure, which is in principle an approximation, is proposed as an alternative for dealing with complicated systems (for cases where the recursive approach may become impracticable), such as randomly frustrated models; it consists of factorizing the total number of ground states in terms of the number of ground states at each hierarchy level. Some examples of antiferromagnetic Ising models on different fractal lattices are considered, for which both procedures are applied. It is shown that the factorization approach may lead, in some cases, to the exact ground-state entropy, whereas in other cases it yields very accurate (although slightly lower) estimates.