No Arabic abstract
Dimerized quantum spin systems may appear under several circumstances, e.g by a modulation of the antiferromagnetic exchange coupling in space, or in frustrated quantum antiferromagnets. In general, such systems display a quantum phase transition to a Neel state as a function of a suitable coupling constant. We present here two path-integral formulations appropriate for spin $S=1/2$ dimerized systems. The first one deals with a description of the dimers degrees of freedom in an SO(4) manifold, while the second one provides a path-integral for the bond-operators introduced by Sachdev and Bhatt. The path-integral quantization is performed using the Faddeev-Jackiw symplectic formalism for constrained systems, such that the measures and constraints that result from the algebra of the operators is provided in both cases. As an example we consider a spin-Peierls chain, and show how to arrive at the corresponding field-theory, starting with both a SO(4) formulation and bond-operators.
We develop a dynamical symmetry approach to path integrals for general interacting quantum spin systems. The time-ordered exponential obtained after the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation can be disentangled into the product of a finite number of the usual exponentials. This procedure leads to a set of stochastic differential equations on the group manifold, which can be further formulated in terms of the supersymmetric effective action. This action has the form of the Witten topological field theory in the continuum limit. As a consequence, we show how it can be used to obtain the exact results for a specific quantum many-body system which can be otherwise solved only by the Bethe ansatz. To our knowledge this represents the first example of a many-body system treated exactly using the path integral formulation. Moreover, our method can deal with time-dependent parameters, which we demonstrate explicitly.
We study a family of frustrated anti-ferromagnetic spin-$S$ systems with a fully dimerized ground state. This state can be exactly obtained without the need to include any additional three-body interaction in the model. The simplest members of the family can be used as a building block to generate more complex geometries like spin tubes with a fully dimerized ground state. After present some numerical results about the phase diagram of these systems, we show that the ground state is robust against the inclusion of weak disorder in the couplings as well as several kinds of perturbations, allowing to study some other interesting models as a perturbative expansion of the exact one. A discussion on how to determine the dimerization region in terms of quantum information estimators is also presented. Finally, we explore the relation of these results with a the case of the a 4-leg spin tube which recently was proposed as the model for the description of the compound Cu$_2$Cl$_4$D$_8$C$_4$SO$_2$, delimiting the region of the parameter space where this model presents dimerization in its ground state.
Stochastic mechanics---the study of classical stochastic systems governed by things like master equations and Fokker-Planck equations---exhibits striking mathematical parallels to quantum mechanics. In this article, we make those parallels more transparent by presenting a quantum mechanics-like formalism for deriving a path integral description of systems described by stochastic differential equations. Our formalism expediently recovers the usual path integrals (the Martin-Siggia-Rose-Janssen-De Dominicis and Onsager-Machlup forms) and is flexible enough to account for different variable domains (e.g. real line versus compact interval), stochastic interpretations, arbitrary numbers of variables, explicit time-dependence, dimensionful control parameters, and more. We discuss the implications of our formalism for stochastic biology.
An expression for the Green function G(E;x_1,x_2) of the Schroedinger equation is obtained through the approximations of the path integral by n-fold multiple integrals. The approximations to Re{G(E;x,x)} on the real E-axis have peaks near the values of the energy levels E_{j}. The analytic and numerical examples for one-dimensional and multi-dimensional harmonic and anharmonic oscillators, and Poeschl-Teller potential wells, show that median values of these peaks for approximate G(E;0,0) corresponds with accuracy of order 10% to the exact values of even levels already in the lowest orders of approximation n=1 and n=2, i.e. when the path integral is replaced by a line or double integral. The weights of the peaks approximate the values of the squared modulus of the wave functions at x=0 with the same accuracy.
Photoinduced charge dynamics in dimerized systems is studied on the basis of the exact diagonalization method and the time-dependent Schrodinger equation for a one-dimensional spinless-fermion model at half filling and a two-dimensional model for $kappa$-(bis[ethylenedithio]tetrathiafulvalene)$_2$X [$kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X] at three-quarter filling. After the application of a one-cycle pulse of a specifically polarized electric field, the charge densities at half of the sites of the system oscillate in the same phase and those at the other half oscillate in the opposite phase. For weak fields, the Fourier transform of the time profile of the charge density at any site after photoexcitation has peaks for finite-sized systems that correspond to those of the steady-state optical conductivity spectrum. For strong fields, these peaks are suppressed and a new peak appears on the high-energy side, that is, the charge densities mainly oscillate with a single frequency, although the oscillation is eventually damped. In the two-dimensional case without intersite repulsion and in the one-dimensional case, this frequency corresponds to charge-transfer processes by which all the bonds connecting the two classes of sites are exploited. Thus, this oscillation behaves as an electronic breathing mode. The relevance of the new peak to a recently found reflectivity peak in $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X after photoexcitation is discussed.