Modulated phases and devil’s staircases in a layered mean-field version of the ANNNI model

We investigate the phase diagram of a spin-1/2 Ising model on a cubic lattice, with competing interactions between nearest and next-nearest neighbors along an axial direction, and fully connected spins on the sites of each perpendicular layer. The problem is formulated in terms of a set of noninteracting Ising chains in a position-dependent field. At low temperatures, as in the standard mean-field version of the Axial-Next-Nearest-Neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model, there are many distinct spatially commensurate phases that spring from a multiphase point of infinitely degenerate ground states. As temperature increases, we confirm the existence of a branching mechanism associated with the onset of higher-order commensurate phases. We check that the ferromagnetic phase undergoes a first-order transition to the modulated phases. Depending on a parameter of competition, the wave number of the striped patterns locks in rational values, giving rise to a devil’s staircase. We numerically calculate the Hausdorff dimension D0 associated with these fractal structures, and show that D0 increases with temperature but seems to reach a limiting value smaller than D0=1. •The ANNNI model displays a spectacular phase diagram with many modulated structures.•We formulate an analog of the ANNNI model, with fully connected layers of spins.•The wave number of the modulated phases gives rise to a devil’s staircase.•We obtain the temperature dependence of the Hausdorff dimension of the staircases.