One-dimensional frustrated plaquette compass model: Nematic phase and spontaneous multimerization

We introduce a one-dimensional (1D) pseudospin model on a ladder where the Ising interactions along the legs and along the rungs alternate between XiXi+1 and ZiZi+1 for even/odd bond (rung). We include also the next-nearest-neighbor Ising interactions on plaquettes' diagonals that alternate in such a way that a model where only leg interactions are switched on is equivalent to the one when only the diagonal ones are present. Thus in the absence of rung interactions the model can interpolate between two 1D compass models. The model possesses local symmetries which are the parities within each 2×2 cell (plaquette) of the ladder. We find that for different values of the interaction it can realize ground states that differ by the patterns formed by these local parities. By exact diagonalization we derive detailed phase diagrams for small systems of L=4, 6, and 8 plaquettes, and use next L=12 to identify generic phases that appear in larger systems as well. Among them we find a nematic phase with macroscopic degeneracy when the leg and diagonal interactions are equal and the rung interactions are larger than a critical value. By performing a perturbative expansion around this phase we find indeed a very complex competition around the nematic phase which has to do with releasing frustration in this range of parameters. The nematic phase is similar to the one found in the two-dimensional compass model. For particular parameters the low-energy sector of the present plaquette model reduces to a 1D compass model with spins S=1 which suggests that it realizes peculiar crossovers within the class of compass models. Finally, we show that the model can realize phases with broken translation invariance which can be either dimerized, trimerized, etc., or completely disordered and highly entangled in a well identified window of the phase diagram.