Thermal pseudo-transitions in a frustrated spin-pseudospin sawtooth chain

Abstract

We present an exact analysis of a spin--pseudospin X sawtooth chain that incorporates three distinct valence states of copper ions and serves as a minimal model for one-dimensional cuprates composed of corner-sharing copper triangles. The model includes magnetic exchange and electrostatic coupling constants both along the base sites and between base and apex sites capturing the competition between spin and charge degrees of freedom. Using the transfer-matrix method, we derive exact expressions for the free energy and obtain an analytical condition defining the pseudo-critical line associated with pronounced thermodynamic anomalies. The ground-state analysis reveals, besides an antiferromagnetic phase, three frustrated phases characterized by distinct residual entropies. At finite temperatures, these zero-temperature phase boundaries evolve into narrow entropy ridges signaling pseudo-transitions between the corresponding quasi-phases. The specific heat and the avoided-crossing scale exhibit sharp but continuous peaks at the pseudo-critical temperature, whereas the physical correlation length may be controlled by a different subleading eigenvalue. Local correlation functions uncover a cooperative rearrangement from charge-dominated to magnetically correlated regimes. Our results demonstrate that the sawtooth geometry promotes frustration and short-range coherence leading to pronounced pseudo-transition behavior.