Controlling the stripe order in a diluted frustrated magnet

We study the spin-density wave (stripe) order in a two-dimensional frustrated Ising model using Monte-Carlo simulations. It is known that spinless impurities can destroy the stripe phase via a random field mechanism because the stripe order parameter breaks a real-space symmetry [1]. Here, we investigate the effect of anisotropic exchange interactions that explicitly break the symmetry between the stripe directions. We demonstrate that weak anisotropies are sufficient to restore the stripe phase and the corresponding phase transition. We discuss implications for the observability of the random-field mechanism in experiments.

[1] Kunwar, Shashikant Singh, et al. Phys. Rev. B 98., 024206 (2018).