Magnetic analogue of liquid-gas phase transition of water: case study of a spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg model on a diamond-decorated square lattice

Abstract: The spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg model on a diamond-decorated square lattice exhibits an intriguing temperature-driven phase transition in a magnetic field between a classical ferrimagnetic phase and a quantum monomer-dimer phase. A generalized decoration-iteration transformation accurately maps the considered model to an effective spin-1/2 Ising model on a square lattice with temperature-dependent effective interactions and field, whereby the effective field vanishes at the phase boundary separating the classical ferrimagnetic phase from the quantum monomer-dimer phase. Typical features of the magnetization, magnetic susceptibility and specific heat in the vicinity of discontinuous and continuous thermal phase transitions between the classical ferrimagnetic phase and the quantum monomer-dimer phase are elucidated.