Critical properties of the fully frustrated 2-D XY model

Abstract

We briefly review results from a detailed Monte Carlo study of the critical properties of the 2‐D XY model at full frustration in a square lattice. We have obtained the critical exponents of the model from explicit calculations of the thermodynamic and correlation functions for the spin and chiral degrees of freedom. We found that the critical exponents of the spin phase transition are ν=0.3069 and η=0.1915, which are to be compared with the unfrustrated XY model exponents ν=0.5 and η=0.25. We also found that the critical exponents of the chiral transition are νχ=0.875, 2β=0.1936, 2γ=1.82, and 2γ′=1.025, which are different from those expected for the 2‐D Ising model. We conclude that these results indicate that the fully frustrated XY model is in a new universality class. We also mention a successful comparison of the results for the spin degrees of freedom to experimental results in frustrated Josephson junction arrays.