Effective Hamiltonian and low-lying energy clustering patterns of four-sublattice antiferromagnets

Abstract

We study the low-lying energy clustering patterns of quantum antiferromagnets with p sublattices (in particular p=4). We treat each sublattice as a large spin, and using second-order degenerate perturbation theory, we derive the effective (biquadratic) Hamiltonian coupling the p large spins. In order to compare with exact diagonalizations, the Hamiltonian is explicitly written for a finite-size lattice, and it contains information on energies of excited states as well as the ground state. The result is applied to the face-centered-cubic Type I antiferromagnet of spin 1/2, including second-neighbor interactions. A 32-site system is exactly diagonalized, and the energy spectrum of the low-lying singlets follows the analytically predicted clustering pattern.