Exact matrix product states at the quantum Lifshitz tricritical point in a spin-1/2 zigzag-chain antiferromagnet with anisotropic $\Gamma$-term

Abstract

Quantum anisotropic exchange interactions in magnets can induce competitions between phases in a different manner from those typically driven by geometrically frustrated interactions. We study a one-dimensional spin-1/2 zigzag chain with such an interaction, $\Gamma$-term, in conjunction with the Heisenberg interactions. We find a ground state phase diagram featuring a multicritical point where five phases converge: a uniform ferromagnet, two antiferromagnets, Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid and a dimer-singlet coexisting with nematic order. This multicritical point is simultaneously quantum tricritical and Lifshitz, and most remarkably, it hosts multi-degenerate ground state wave functions, whose exact form is obtained in the matrix product form and its degeneracy increases in squares of system size.