Localized dopant motion across the 2D Ising phase transition

Abstract

I investigate the motion of a single hole in 2D spin lattices with square and triangular geometries. While the spins have nearest neighbor Ising spin couplings $J$, the hole is allowed to move only in 1D along a single line in the 2D lattice with nearest neighbor hopping amplitude $t$. The non-equilibrium hole dynamics is initialized by suddenly removing a single spin from the thermal Ising spin lattice. I find that for any nonzero spin coupling and temperature, the hole is localized. This is an extension of the thermally induced localization phenomenon [Phys. Rev. Res. 6, 023325 (2024)] to the case, where there is a phase transition to a long-range ordered ferromagnetic phase. The dynamics depends only on the ratio of the temperature to the spin coupling, $k_BT / |J|$, and on the ratio of the spin coupling to the hopping $J/t$. I characterize these dependencies in great detail. In particular, I find universal behavior at high temperatures, common features for the square and triangular lattices across the Curie temperatures for ferromagnetic interactions, and highly distinct behaviors for the two geometries in the presence of antiferromagnetic interactions due geometric frustration in the triangular lattice.