The Variational Cumulant Expansion Study of Spatially Anisotropic XY Model

With the variational-cumulant expansion (VCE) method, the critical temperature and spontaneous magnetization of the spatially anisotropic XY model are calculated up to the fourth order. The variational parameter is determined by the complete variational method and the results are compared with both the Monte Carlo results and the self-consistent harmonic approximation (SCHA) results. It is shown that the VCE method can give a better result than the SCHA method when the coupling between adjacent layers is small.