Subtlety of Determining the Critical Exponent $\nu$ of the Spin-1/2 Heisenberg Model with a Spatially Staggered Anisotropy on the Honeycomb Lattice

Abstract

Puzzled by the indication of a new critical theory for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model with a spatially staggered anisotropy on the square lattice as suggested in \cite{Wenzel08}, we study a similar anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice. The critical point where the phase transition occurs due to the dimerization as well as the critical exponent $\nu$ are analyzed in great detail. Remarkly, using most of the available data points in conjunction with the expected finite-size scaling ansatz with a sub-leading correction indeed leads to a consistent $\nu =0.691(2)$ with that calculated in \cite{Wenzel08}. However by using the data with large number of spins $N$, we obtain $\nu =0.707(6)$ which agrees with the most accurate Monte Carlo O(3) value $\nu =0.7112(5)$ as well.

Comments: 7 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, version accepted for publishing