Frustrated Order by Disorder: the Pyrochlore Antiferromagnet with Bond Disorder

Abstract

The classical Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the pyrochlore lattice is macroscopically and continuously degenerate and the system remains disordered at all temperatures, even in the presence of weak dilution with nonmagnetic ions. We show that, in stark contrast, weak bond disorder lifts the ground state degeneracy in favour of locally collinear spin configurations. We present a proof that for a single tetrahedron the ground state is perfectly collinear but identify two mechanisms which preclude the establishment of a globally collinear state; one due to frustration and the other due to higher-order effects. We thus obtain a rugged energy landscape, which is necessary to account for the glassy phenomena found in real systems such as the pyrochlore Y_2Mo_2O_7 recently reported by Booth et al. [Booth] to contain a substantial degree of bond disorder.