Magnetic order in the Shastry-Sutherland model

The ground state properties of the Shastry-Sutherland model in the presence of an external field are investigated by means of variational states built up from unpaired spins (monomers) and singlet pairs of spins (dimers). The minimum of the energy is characterized by specific monomer-dimer configurations, which visualize the magnetic order in the sectors with fixed magnetization M=S/N. A change in the magnetic order is observed if the frustrating coupling alpha exceeds a critical value alpha_c(M), which depends on M. Special attention is paid to the ground state configurations at M=1/4, 1/6, 1/8.