Topological Devil’s Staircase in a Constrained Kagome Ising Antiferromagnet
Abstract
We show that the constrained Ising model on the kagome lattice with infinite first and third neighbor couplings undergoes an infinite series of thermal first-order transitions at which, as in the Kasteleyn transition, linear defects of infinite length condense. However, their density undergoes abrupt jumps because of the peculiar structure of the low temperature phase, which is only partially ordered and hosts a finite density of zero-energy domain walls. The number of linear defects between consecutive zero-energy domain walls is quantized to integer values, leading to a devil's staircase of topological origin. By contrast to the devil's staircase of the anisotropic next-nearest neighbor Ising and related models, the wave vector is not fixed to commensurate values inside each phase.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Advanced Condensed Matter Physics
Topological Materials and Phenomena
Theoretical and Computational Physics
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Physical Review Letters
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Volume
- 136
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 086701–086701
- Publication date
- 14 January 2026
- Language
- EN