The phase diagram of the Shastry-Sutherland antiferromagnet

Full text: The material SrCu2(BO3)2, synthesised only a few years ago, appears to be an excellent realization of the Shastry-Sutherland model. The main physics of this model is a competition between Neel order and dimerization. Early studies suggested a single quantum phase transition separating these two phases, but recent studies suggest the presence of an intermediate phase. Various candidates for this intermediate phase have been proposed, including long-range helical order, and a plaquette-singlet phase. We use series expansion methods to argue against each of these, although our new extended results do support the existence of an intermediate phase of some kind. We propose a columnar dimer phase, as a possible candidate, and explore some of its properties