A cascade of orbital-field-driven phases with a Lifshitz-type transition to unidirectional spiral order
Abstract
Frustration in magnetic systems gives rise to unconventional orders and exotic spin liquids. Here, we explore a new type of frustration arising from an intrinsic bond-dependent orbital-field that couples orbital degrees of freedom to spin correlations. Introducing this orbital-field interaction into the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice, we show that local spin-orbital constraints generate a subextensive degeneracy, lifted by order-by-disorder to select distinct collinear magnets in a cascade of phases as the orbital field increases from a para-orbital liquid. At larger fields, the selected phase gives way to an incommensurate unidirectional spiral that spontaneously breaks chiral symmetry. This transition is driven by the coupling of a Goldstone mode to gapped dynamical spin-orbital fluctuations. The spin stiffness becomes negative along a particular direction, while the spiral wavevector grows as the square root of the distance from the transition, signaling a Lifshitz-type transition. We present a microscopic route to realizing this orbital field and discuss candidate materials.
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BibTeX
@misc{nakai2026cascade,
title = {{A cascade of orbital-field-driven phases with a Lifshitz-type transition to unidirectional spiral order}},
author = {Hiroki Nakai and Hae-Young Kee},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.36214},
eprint = {2610.36214},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36214},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A cascade of orbital-field-driven phases with a Lifshitz-type transition to unidirectional spiral order
AU - Hiroki Nakai
AU - Hae-Young Kee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/26
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.36214
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.36214
AB - Frustration in magnetic systems gives rise to unconventional orders and exotic spin liquids. Here, we explore a new type of frustration arising from an intrinsic bond-dependent orbital-field that couples orbital degrees of freedom to spin correlations. Introducing this orbital-field interaction into the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice, we show that local spin-orbital constraints generate a subextensive degeneracy, lifted by order-by-disorder to select distinct collinear magnets in a cascade of phases as the orbital field increases from a para-orbital liquid. At larger fields, the selected phase gives way to an incommensurate unidirectional spiral that spontaneously breaks chiral symmetry. This transition is driven by the coupling of a Goldstone mode to gapped dynamical spin-orbital fluctuations. The spin stiffness becomes negative along a particular direction, while the spiral wavevector grows as the square root of the distance from the transition, signaling a Lifshitz-type transition. We present a microscopic route to realizing this orbital field and discuss candidate materials.
ER -