Frustrated Antiferromagnets at High Fields: Bose-Einstein Condensation in Degenerate Spectra

Abstract

Quantum phase transition at the saturation field is studied for a class of frustrated quantum antiferromagnets. The considered models include (i) the ${J}_{1}\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}{J}_{2}$ frustrated square-lattice antiferromagnet with ${J}_{2}=\frac{1}{2}{J}_{1}$ and (ii) the nearest-neighbor Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a face centered cubic lattice. In the fully saturated phase the magnon spectra for the two models have lines of degenerate minima. Transition into a partially magnetized state is treated via a mapping to a dilute gas of hard-core bosons and by complementary spin-wave calculations. Momentum dependence of the exact four-point boson vertex removes the degeneracy of the single-particle excitation spectra and selects the ordering wave vectors at $(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$ and $(\ensuremath{\pi},0,0)$ for the two models. We predict a unique form for the magnetization curve $\ensuremath{\Delta}M=S\ensuremath{-}M\ensuremath{\simeq}{\ensuremath{\mu}}^{(d\ensuremath{-}1)/2}(\mathrm{log}\ensuremath{\mu}{)}^{(d\ensuremath{-}1)}$, where $\ensuremath{\mu}$ is a distance from the quantum critical point.