No Arabic abstract
In frustrated spin ladders composed of antiferromagnetically coupled chains, homogeneous or inhomogeneous, the interplay of frustration and correlations causes the emergence of two phases, Haldane (H) phase and rung singlet (RS) phase, in which the transition between these two phases had been under debate. In this paper we investigate the ground state phase diagram of frustrated mixed-spin-(1, 1/2) ladders, using the notions from quantum information theory such as entanglement entropy, Schmidt gap and entanglement levels degeneracies, and also defining various local and nonlocal order parameters. Employing two numerical techniques, the infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithms, we obtain the ground state phase diagram of the ladder, and demonstrate that there is an intermediate phase between RS and H phases, where the ground state is disordered and the entanglement spectrum follow no particular pattern.
A Heisenberg spin-$s$ chain with alternating ferromagnetic ($-J_1^F<0$) and antiferromagnetic ($J_1^A>0$) nearest-neighbor (NN) interactions, exhibits the Dimer and spin-$2s$ Haldane phases in the limits $J_1^F/J_1^A rightarrow 0$ and $J_1^F/J_1^A rightarrow infty$ respectively. These two phases are understood to be topologically equivalent. Induction of the frustration through the next nearest-neighbor ferromagnetic interaction ($-J_2^F<0$) produces a very rich quantum phase diagram. With frustration, the whole phase diagram is divided into a ferromagnetic (FM) and a nonmagnetic (NM) phase. For $s=1/2$, the full NM phase is seen to be of Haldane-Dimer type, but for $s>1/2$, a spiral phase comes between the FM and the Haldane-Dimer phases. The study of a suitably defined string-order parameter and spin-gap at the phase boundary indicates that the Haldane-Dimer and spiral phases have different topological characters. We also find that, along the $J_2^F=frac 12 J_1^F$ line in the NM phase, an NN dimer state is the {it exact} groundstate, provided $J_1^A>J_C=kappa J_1^F$ where $kappa le s + h$ for applied magnetic field $h$. Without magnetic field, the position of $J_C$ is on the FM-NM phase boundary when $s=1/2$, but for $s>1/2$, the location of $J_C$ is on the phase separation line between the Haldane-Dimer and spiral phases.
We report low temperature electron spin resonance experimental and theoretical studies of an archetype $S=1/2$ strong-rung spin ladder material (C$_{5}$H$_{12}$N)$_{2}$CuBr$_{4}$. Unexpected dynamics is detected deep in the Tomonaga-Luttinger spin liquid regime. Close to the point where the system is half-magnetized (and believed to be equivalent to a gapless easy plane chain in zero field) we observed orientation-dependent spin gap and anomalous $g$-factor values. Field theoretical analysis demonstrates that the observed low-energy excitation modes in magnetized (C$_{5}$H$_{12}$N)$_{2}$CuBr$_{4}$ are solitonic excitations caused by Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction presence.
The quantum phases of 2-leg spin-1/2 ladders with skewed rungs are obtained using exact diagonalization of systems with up to 26 spins and by density matrix renormalization group calculations to 500 spins. The ladders have isotropic antiferromagnetic (AF) exchange $J_2 > 0$ between first neighbors in the legs, variable isotropic AF exchange $J_1$ between some first neighbors in different legs, and an unpaired spin per odd-membered ring when $J_1 gg J_2$. Ladders with skewed rungs and variable $J_1$ have frustrated AF interactions leading to multiple quantum phases: AF at small $J_1$, either F or AF at large $J_1$, as well as bond-order-wave phases or reentrant AF (singlet) phases at intermediate $J_1$.
Symmetry-protected trivial (SPt) phases of matter are the product-state analogue of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases. This means, SPt phases can be adiabatically connected to a product state by some path that preserves the protecting symmetry. Moreover, SPt and SPT phases can be adiabatically connected to each other when interaction terms that break the symmetries protecting the SPT order are added in the Hamiltonian. It is also known that spin-1 SPT phases in quantum spin chains can emerge as effective intermediate phases of spin-2 Hamiltonians. In this paper we show that a similar scenario is also valid for SPt phases. More precisely, we show that for a given spin-2 quantum chain, effective intermediate spin-1 SPt phases emerge in some regions of the phase diagram, these also being adiabatically connected to non-trivial intermediate SPT phases. We characterize the phase diagram of our model by studying quantities such as the entanglement entropy, symmetry-related order parameters, and 1-site fidelities. Our numerical analysis uses Matrix Product States (MPS) and the infinite Time-Evolving Block Decimation (iTEBD) method to approximate ground states of the system in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, we provide a field theory description of the possible quantum phase transitions between the SPt phases. Together with the numerical results, such a description shows that the transitions may be described by Conformal Field Theories (CFT) with central charge c=1. Our results are in agreement, and further generalize, those in [Y. Fuji, F. Pollmann, M. Oshikawa, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 177204 (2015)].
We report experimental and theoretical evidence that Rb$_2$Cu$_2$Mo$_3$O$_{12}$ has a nonmagnetic tetramer ground state of a two-leg ladder comprising antiferromagnetically coupled frustrated spin-$1/2$ chains and exhibits a Haldane spin gap of emergent spin-1 pairs. Three spin excitations split from the spin-1 triplet by a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction are identified in inelastic neutron-scattering and electron spin resonance spectra. A tiny magnetic field generates ferroelectricity without closing the spin gap, indicating a novel class of ferroelectricity induced by a vector spin chirality order.