First-order transition and tricritical behavior of the transverse crystal field spin-1 Ising model

Abstract

The phase diagram of the spin-1 Ising model in the presence of a transverse crystal-field anisotropy (Dx) is studied within the framework of an effective-field theory with correlation. The effect of the coordination number (z) on the phase diagram in the T–Dx plane is investigated. We observe only second-order transitions for coordination number z<7, while that for z≥7 we have first- and second-order transitions, with the presence of two tricritical points. The lower tricritical temperature (Tt) decreases monotonically with the increasing value of z, and in the limit of z→∞ we found Tt=0, corresponding to the mean-field solution [Ricardo de Sousa and Branco, Phys. Rev. E 77 (2008) 012104] with a single tricritical point in the phase diagram.