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  • Open Access

Extended Ashkin-Teller transition in two coupled frustrated Haldane chains

Bowy M. La Rivière*

Natalia Chepiga

  • Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom

  • *Contact author: b.m.lariviere@tudelft.nl
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Phys. Rev. B 113, 205107 – Published 4 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yfwf-vxwb

Abstract

We report an extremely rich ground-state phase diagram of two spin-1 Haldane chains frustrated with a three-site exchange and coupled by the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg interaction on a zigzag ladder. A particular feature of the phase diagram is the extended quantum phase transition in the Ashkin-Teller universality class that separates the plaquette phase, which spontaneously breaks translation symmetry, and the uniform disordered phase. The former is connected to the Haldane phase, stabilized by large interchain coupling, via the topological Gaussian transition. Upon decreasing the interchain interactions, this intermediate disorder phase vanishes, giving place to a dimerized phase separated from the plaquette phase on one side via a nonmagnetic Ising transition and from the Haldane phase on the other side by a topological weak first-order transition. Finally, in the limit of two decoupled chains, we recover a quantum critical point that corresponds to two copies of the Wess-Zumino-Witten SU(2)2 criticality with a total central charge c=3.

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Phys. Rev. B 113, 205107– Published 4 May, 2026
  • Received 27 February 2026
  • Revised 7 April 2026
  • Accepted 15 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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