The mixed spin-1 and spin-1/2 Heisenberg octahedral chain with regularly alternating monomeric spin-1 sites and square-plaquette spin-1/2 sites is investigated using a variational technique, localized-magnon approach, exact diagonalization, and density-matrix renormalization-group method. The investigated model has, in a magnetic field, an extraordinarily rich ground-state phase diagram, which includes the uniform and cluster-based Haldane phases, two ferrimagnetic phases of Lieb-Mattis type, two quantum spin liquids, two bound magnon crystals, in addition to the fully polarized ferromagnetic phase. The lowest-energy eigenstates in a highly frustrated parameter region belong to flatbands and, hence, low-temperature thermodynamics above the bound magnon-crystal ground states can be satisfactorily described within the localized-magnon approach. The variational method provides exact evidence for the magnon-crystal phase with a character of the monomer-tetramer ground state at zero field, whereas another magnon-crystal phase with a single bound magnon at each square plaquette is found in a high-field region. A diversity of quantum ground states gives rise to manifold zero-temperature magnetization curves, which may involve up to four wide intermediate plateaus at zero, one-sixth, one-third, and two-thirds of the saturation magnetization, two quantum spin-liquid regions, and two tiny plateaus at one-ninth and one-twelfth of the saturation magnetization corresponding to the fragmentized cluster-based Haldane phases.

• Received 14 March 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.094405