Magnetization plateaus of the frustrated Ising Shastry–Sutherland system: Wang–Landau simulation

The Wang–Landau algorithm is used to study the magnetic properties of the Ising model on the Shastry–Sutherland lattice in order to understand the interesting magnetization plateaus observed in TmB₄. The simulated results demonstrate that the equilibrium state of the model produces only the 1/3 and 1/2 magnetization plateaus at low temperatures even when the random-exchange term or the long-range interactions are taken into account. This confirms our earlier conclusion (Huang et al., 2013) [20] that those fractional plateaus observed in experiments may be due to the magnetization dynamics. - Highlights: • The magnetic behaviors of TmB₄ are investigated using the Wang–Landau method. • The equilibrium state only produces the 1/3 and 1/2 magnetization plateaus. • Those fractional plateaus must arise from the non-equilibrium magnetization