Competing interactions in double-chains: Ising and spherical models

We investigate the thermodynamic properties of double chains of Ising and spherical spins with different first and a crossed second neighbour interaction in zero field. The interest is focussed on the region where different ground states are nearly degenerate due to competing interaction constants. The Ising system shows quasi-singular behaviour of the susceptibility for certain ratios of parameters. Moreover the nearest neighbour correlation function exhibits a sharp crossover from high-temperature “compensation-point” to low temperature ferro- or antiferromagnetic behaviour. An analogy is found between compensation points and tricritical points of higher dimensional systems.