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Competing interactions may induce nontrivial phases in low dimensional systems. A simple model that nevertheless exhibits a rich phase diagram is the frustrated ferromagnetic spin-1/2 chain. The interest in this system is twofold: first, chiral, nematic, and/or multipolar order can be driven by adding a magnetic field [1,2,3] and secondly, materials such as LiCuV04 are believed to be well described by this model [4,5]. While previous studies, based on numerical and field theoretical results, have clarified the magnetic phase diagram of the model with SU(2) symmetric exchange interactions, we here focus on the phase diagram in the presence of an external magnetic field and including an exchange anisotropy [6]. Experimentally, this kind of anisotropy is expected to be present in LiCuV04 [4,5]. Using the density matrix renormalization group method, we clarify the phase diagram and in particular, identify regions with chiral order. We discuss our results with respect to experimental findings. As a complement to the the zero-temperature study, we further utilize finite-temperature DMRG to compute the specific heat for experimentally relevant parameters. |
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