Competing nematic interactions in a generalized XY model in two and three dimensions

Abstract

We study a generalization of the XY model with an additional nematic-like term through extensive numerical simulations and finite-size techniques, both in two and three dimensions. While the original model favors local alignment, the extra term induces angles of 2π/q between neighboring spins. We focus here on the q = 8 case (while presenting new results for other values of q as well) whose phase diagram is much richer than the well-known q = 2 case. In particular, the model presents not only continuous, standard transitions between Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phases as in q = 2, but also infinite-order transitions involving intermediate, competition-driven phases absent for q = 2 and 3. Besides presenting multiple transitions, our results show that having vortices decoupling at a transition is not a sufficient condition for it to be of BKT type.