Orbital order driven quantum criticality

¹  Department of Physics, Washington University - St. Louis, MO 63160, USA
²  Department of Physics, Indiana University - Bloomington, IN 47405, USA

Corresponding author: zohar@wuphys.wustl.edu

Received: 6 March 2008
Accepted: 29 September 2008

Abstract

Charge, spin, and orbital degrees of freedom underlie the physics of transition metal compounds. Much work has revealed quantum critical points associated with spin and charge degrees of freedom in many of these systems. Here we illustrate that the simplest models that embody the orbital degrees of freedom —the two- and three-dimensional quantum orbital compass models— exhibit an exact quantum critical behavior on diluted square and cubic lattices (with doping δ = 1/4 and δ = 1/2, respectively). This raises the possibility of quantum critical points triggered by the degradation of orbital order upon doping (or applying pressure to) such transition metal systems. We prove the existence of an orbital spin glass in several related systems in which the orbital couplings are made non-uniform. Moreover, a new orbital Larmor precession (i.e., a periodic change in the orbital state) is predicted when uniaxial pressure is applied.