A SPIN MODEL FOR INVESTIGATING CHIRALITY

Spin chirality has generated great interest recently both from possibl e applications to flux phases and intrinsically, as an example of a se veral-site magnetic order parameter that can be long ranged even where simpler order parameters are not. Previous work (motivated by the flu x phases) has focused on antiferromagnetic chiral order; we construct a model in which the chirality orders ferromagnetically and investigat e the model's behaviour as a function of spin. Enlisting the aid of ex act diagonalization, spin waves, perturbation theory, and mean fields, we conclude that the model probably has long-ranged chiral order for spins 1 and greater and no non-trivial chiral order for spin 1/2.