Winding-Sector Transitions and Thermodynamic Incommensurability in Helical Valence Bond Phase under Tilted Boundary Conditions

Abstract

We investigate the ground states of the $S = 1/2$ staircase $J$-$Q_3$ model in the maximally anisotropic limit by employing projector quantum Monte Carlo simulations. To overcome boundary-induced finite-size ambiguities inherent in the study of spatially modulated structures, we implement a $45^{\circ}$ tilted periodic boundary condition that eliminates intermediate phases and provides direct access to winding-sector transitions of the system. By defining a domain wall density to quantify the spatial modulation of the helical valence bond phase, we perform thermodynamic extrapolations and demonstrate that both the domain wall density and the characteristic wavevector evolve continuously with the coupling ratio, exhibiting no commensurate lock-in behavior. Our results establish that the helical valence bond phase is a genuine two-dimensional incommensurate phase with long-range bond-bond order in the thermodynamic limit, clarifying that winding-sector transitions are finite-size effects enforced by boundary commensurability. Furthermore, we determine the phase transition point between columnar valence bond solid phase and helical valence bond phase to be $g_c = 0.046(2)$.