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Impurity spin textures across conventional and deconfined quantum critical points of two-dimensional antiferromagnets

M. Metlitski,S. Sachdev

Published 2007 in Physical Review B

ABSTRACT

We describe the spin distribution in the vicinity of a nonmagnetic impurity in a two-dimensional antiferromagnet undergoing a transition from a magnetically ordered N\'eel state to a paramagnet with a spin gap. The quantum critical ground state in a finite system has total spin $S=1∕2$ (if the system without the impurity had an even number of $S=1∕2$ spins), and recent numerical studies in a double layer antiferromagnet [K. H. H\"oglund et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 087203 (2007)] have shown that the spin has a universal spatial form delocalized across the entire sample. We present the field theory describing the uniform and staggered magnetizations in this spin texture for two classes of antiferromagnets: (i) the transition from a N\'eel state to a paramagnet with local spin singlets, in models with an even number of $S=1∕2$ spins per unit cell, which are described by a O(3) Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson field theory; and (ii) the transition from a N\'eel state to a valence bond solid, in antiferromagnets with a single $S=1∕2$ spin per unit cell, which are described by a ``deconfined'' field theory of spinons.

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