We present a temperature and magnetic field dependence study of spin transport and magnetothermal corrections to the thermal conductivity in the spin S = 1/2 integrable easy-plane regime Heisenberg chain, extending an earlier analysis based on the Be
the ansatz method. We critically discuss the low temperature, weak magnetic field behavior, the effect of magnetothermal corrections in the vicinity of the critical field and their role in recent thermal conductivity experiments in 1D quantum magnets.
We have investigated the thermal conductivity kappa_mag of high-purity single crystals of the spin chain compound Sr2CuO3 which is considered an excellent realization of the one-dimensional spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. We find that th
e spinon heat conductivity kappa_mag is strongly enhanced as compared to previous results obtained on samples with lower chemical purity. The analysis of kappa_mag allows to compute the spinon mean free path l_mag as a function of temperature. At low-temperature we find l_magsim0.5mum, corresponding to more than 1200 chain unit cells. Upon increasing the temperature, the mean free path decreases strongly and approaches an exponential decay ~1/T*exp(T*/T) which is characteristic for umklapp processes with the energy scale k_B T*. Based on Matthiesens rule we decompose l_mag into a temperature-independent spinon-defect scattering length l0 and a temperature dependent spinon-phonon scattering length l_sp(T). By comparing l_mag(T) of Sr2CuO3 with that of SrCuO2, we show that the spin-phonon interaction, as expressed by l_sp is practically the same in both systems. The comparison of the empirically derived l_sp with model calculations for the spin-phonon interaction of the one-dimensional spin-1/2 XY model yields reasonable agreement with the experimental data.
Using numerical diagonalization techniques, we explore the effect of local and bond disorder on the finite temperature spin and thermal conductivities of the one dimensional anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model. High-temperature results for local di
sorder show that the dc conductivties are finite, apart from the uncorrelated - XY case - where dc transport vanishes. Moreover, at strong disorder, we find finite dc conductivities at all temperatures $T$, except T=0. The low frequency conductivities are characterized by a nonanalytic cusp shape. Similar behavior is found for bond disorder.
One dimensional systems sometimes show pathologically slow decay of currents. This robustness can be traced to the fact that an integrable model is nearby in parameter space. In integrable models some part of the current can be conserved, explaining
this slow decay. Unfortunately, although this conservation law is formally anticipated, in practice it has been difficult to find in concrete cases, such as the Heisenberg model. We investigate this issue both analytically and numerically and find that the appropriate conservation law can be a non-analytic combination of the known local conservation laws and hence is invisible to elementary assumptions.
