Disordered and ordered states of exactly solvable Ising-Heisenberg planar models with a spatial anisotropy

Ground-state and finite-temperature properties of a special class of exactly solvable Ising-Heisenberg planar models are examined using the generalized decoration-iteration and star-triangle mapping transformations. The investigated spin systems exhibit an interesting quantum behaviour manifested in a remarkable geometric spin frustration, which appears notwithstanding the purely ferromagnetic interactions of the considered model systems. This kind of spin frustration originates from an easy-plane anisotropy in the XXZ Heisenberg interaction between nearest-neighbouring spins that favours ferromagnetic ordering of their transverse components, whereas their longitudinal components are aligned antiferomagnetically.