Chirality and Clock transitions in Twisted Dipolar Clusters

Abstract: We study samples and a dipolar model of magnetic rods arranged on twisted polygonal clusters in terms of the twist angle. We find that the relative twist between polygons induces noncollinear chiral phases, ranging from flux vortex closure to hedgehog like radial configurations. Chirality, quantified in terms of a bond order parameter, is an emergent property that behaves here as an Ising variable. The chiral configurations of the systems can be understood in terms of chirality and clock index order parameters, whose evolution with twist occurs through two types of first order phase transitions. Within a fixed Ising chiral sector, the clock index, rooted in the $C_N$ invariance of the polygons, characterizes chiral textures that share chirality. As the twist increases, it continuously shifts the preferred relative clock phase, but the Nfold anisotropy only allows discrete orientations; the competition produces a tilted Nfold energy landscape whose global minimum hops discontinuously between clock sectors. As the number of sites in the polygon grows, the resulting response displays a nonlinear crossover from rigid, Ising like behavior to an almost $\rm U(1)$ invariant regime, governed by a twist induced suppression of the emergent $Z_N$ clock anisotropy. A Landau phenomenology captures these trends and naturally extends to bilayer lattices, where we show that twisted honeycomb systems realize an effective sine-Gordon theory with twist-controlled transitions between isolated domain walls and domain wall lattices.