Correlated Partial Disorder in a Weakly Frustrated Quantum Antiferromagnet

Abstract

Partial disorder - the microscopic coexistence of long-range magnetic order and disorder - is a rare phenomenon that has been experimentally and theoretically reported in some Ising- or easy plane-spin systems, driven by entropic effects at finite temperatures. Here, we present an analytical and numerical analysis of the S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the 3×3-distorted triangular lattice, which shows that its quantum ground state has partial disorder in the weakly frustrated regime. This state has a 180° Néel ordered honeycomb subsystem coexisting with disordered spins at the hexagon center sites. These central spins are ferromagnetically aligned at short distances, as a consequence of a Casimir-like effect originated by the zero-point quantum fluctuations of the honeycomb lattice.