Evidence of anomalous Curie constants for nonmagnetic impurities in a critical 2-dimensional $J{Q}_3$ model on the honeycomb lattice

Abstract

The Curie constants $C^{\ast }={\lim }_{T\to 0}T{\chi }_{\text{imp}}$ of a spin-1/2 and a spin-1 impurities are calculated using the quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Here the impurity susceptibility ${\chi }_{\text{imp}}$ is the difference between the uniform susceptibilities with and without the impurity and $T$ is the temperature. Moreover, the two-dimensional quantum $J{Q}_3$ model on the honeycomb lattice is considered as the host system. $T{\chi }_{\text{imp}}$ as a function $T$ is investigated in great detail. Remarkably, our data indicate strongly that $C^{\ast }>0.25$ and $C^{\ast }>2/3$ for the spin-1/2 and the spin-1 impurities, respectively. In particular, although no definite conclusion is obtained due to finite-size effects, we find the Curie constant associated with a spin-1/2 impurity likely converges to a value greater than the established result of 0.262(2) in the literature. The outcomes reached here provide certain evidence that fractional impurity spin is observed for the studied $J{Q}_3$ system.

Comments: 5 pages, 3 figures