Multicritical bifurcation and first-order phase transitions in a three-dimensional Blume-Capel antiferromagnet

Abstract

We present a detailed study by Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling analysis of the phase diagram and ordered bulk phases for the three-dimensional Blume-Capel antiferromagnet in the space of temperature and magnetic and crystal fields (or two chemical potentials in an equivalent lattice-gas model with two particle species and vacancies). The phase diagram consists of surfaces of second- and first-order transitions that enclose a “volume” of ordered phases in the phase space. At relatively high temperatures, these surfaces join smoothly along a line of tricritical points, and at zero magnetic field we obtain good agreement with known values for tricritical exponent ratios [Y. Deng and H.W. J. Blöte, Phys. Rev. E 70, 046111 (2004)]. In limited field regions at lower temperatures (symmetric under reversal of the magnetic field), the tricritical line for this three-dimensional model bifurcates into lines of critical endpoints and critical points, connected by a surface of weak first-order transitions inside the region of ordered phases. This phenomenon is not seen in the two-dimensional version of the same model. We confirm the location of the bifurcation as previously reported [Y.-L. Wang and J. D. Kimel, J. Appl. Phys. 69, 6176 (1991)], and we identify the phases separated by this first-order surface as antiferromagnetically (three-dimensional checker-board) ordered with different vacancy densities. We visualize the phases by real-space snapshots and by structure factors in the three-dimensional space of wave vectors.