Ground states, magnetization plateaus and bipartite entanglement of frustrated spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg and Heisenberg triangular tubes

Abstract

The ground-state phase diagram, magnetization process and bipartite entanglement of the frustrated spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg and Heisenberg triangular tube (three-leg ladder) are investigated in a non-zero external magnetic field. The exact ground-state phase diagram of the spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg tube with Heisenberg intra-rung and Ising inter-rung couplings consists of six distinct gapped phases, which manifest themselves in a magnetization curve as intermediate plateaus at zero, one-third and two-thirds of the saturation magnetization. Four out of six available ground states exhibit quantum entanglement between two spins from the same triangular unit evidenced by a non-zero concurrence. Density-matrix renormalization group calculations are used in order to construct the ground-state phase diagram of the analogous but purely quantum spin-1/2 Heisenberg tube with Heisenberg intra- and inter-rung couplings, which consists of four gapped and three gapless phases. The Heisenberg tube shows a continuous change of the magnetization instead of a plateau at zero magnetization, while the intermediate one-third and two-thirds plateaus may be present or not in the zero-temperature magnetization curve.