Three-magnon problem for exactly rung-dimerized spin ladder is brought up separately at all total spin sectors. At first a special duality transformation of the $\rm Schr\ddot odinger$ equation is found within general outlook. Then the problem is treated within Coordinate Bethe Ansatze. A straightforward approach is developed to obtain pure scattering states. At values S=0 and S=3 of total spin the $\rm Schr\ddot odinger$ equation has the form inherent in the $XXZ$ chain. For $S=1,2$ solvability holds only in five previously found {\it completely integrable} cases. Nevertheless a partial S=1 Bethe solution always exists even for general non integrable model. Pure scattering states for all total spin sectors are presented explicitly.
Three magnon bound states in all total spin sectors of general nonintegrable exactly rung-dimerized spin ladder are obtained by Bethe Ansatz. Basing on this result a dispersion law for $m$-magnon ($m>3$) bound states is conjectured. It is suggested that (depending on correlations between coupling constants) a behavior of the gas parameter (density of rung-triplets) on the boundary of the rung-dimerized phase may either be smooth or have a leap.
On the basis of periodic boundary conditions we study perturbatively a large N asymptotics (N is the number of rungs) for the ground state energy density and gas parameter of a spin ladder with slightly destroyed rung-dimerization. Exactly rung-dimerized spin ladder is treated as the reference model. Explicit perturbative formulas are obtained for three special classes of spin ladders.
An exactly solvable effective model is suggested for an asymmetric spin ladder with dimerized rungs. Magnon mode truncation originated from magnon decay (recently observed in the 1D compound ${\rm IPA-CuCl}_3$) is naturally described within this model. Using Bethe Ansatze we described a one-magnon sector and obtained relations between interaction constants of the model and experimentally observable quantities such as the gap and truncation energies, spin velocity and the truncation wave vector. It is also shown that structure factor turns to zero at the truncation point.
Treating an exactly rung-dimerized spin ladder as a reference model we study perturbatively zero temperature quantum fluctuations in spin ladders with slightly destroyed rung-dimerization. Analytic expressions are obtained for the gas parameter (density of rung-triplets) and the ground state energy per rung. At a strong diagonal frustration as well as at a rather strong antiferromagnetic rung coupling these results well agree with the previous numerical calculations.
We consider the isotropic spin-1/2 two-leg ladders with the dominant spatially modulated rung exchanges. We study the effect of a uniform magnetic field on the ground state phase diagram of the model using the perturbation theory and the numerical Lanczos method. The ground state phase diagram consists of two gapless Luttinger liquid (LL) and three gapped phases. Numerically, we calculate the concurrence between two spins and entanglement entropy between legs. Numerical experiment shows that in principle the gapless LL phases are different. In the first LL phase, only spins on rungs are entang…
The ground-state magnetic phase diagram of a spin $S=1/2$ two-leg ladder with alternating rung exchange $J_{\perp}(n)=J_{\perp}[1 + (-1)^{n} δ]$ is studied using the analytical and numerical approaches. In the limit where the rung exchange is dominant, we have mapped the model onto the effective quantum sine-Gordon model with topological term and identified two quantum phase transitions at magnetization equal to the half of saturation value from a gapped to the gapless regime. These quantum transitions belong to the universality class of the commensurate-incommensurate phase transition. We hav…
We suggest a family of spin-ladder models with exact singlet-rung vacuum. In addition to the terms describing interactions along legs and rungs the Hamiltonian has frustration and cyclic terms. Using coordinate Bethe ansatze all one- and two-dimensional states are constructed. The explicit formula for zero-temperature Raman scattering cross section is derived. The corresponding line-shapes are strongly asymmetric and have no more than one van-Hove singularity. The results are in good agreement with experimental data.
We revisit the phase diagram of the frustrated s=1/2 spin ladder with antiferromagnetic rung and diagonal couplings. In particular, we reexamine the evidence for the columnar dimer phase, which has been predicted from analytic treatment of the model and has been claimed to be found in numerical calculations. By considering longer chains and by keeping more states than in previous work using the density-matrix renormalization group, we show that the numerical evidence presented previously for the existence of the dimerized phase is not unambiguous in view of the present more careful analysis. W…
We study the effect of spin-Peierls instability on the phase-diagram of a frustrated antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 ladder, with weak transverse and diagonal rung coupling. Our analysis focuses on a one-dimensional version of the model (i.e. a single two-leg ladder) where we consider two forms of spin-Peierls (SP) instabilities on the legs: columnar dimers (CD) and staggered dimers (SD). We particularly examine the regime of parameters (corresponding to an intermediate XXZ anisotropy) where the SP and rung coupling terms are equally relevant. In both the CD and SD cases we find that the effective …
We study a two-leg spin-1/2 ladder with isotropic exchanges and biquadratic interactions in the basic plaquettes. It is shown that for the extremely frustrated case, the system exhibits a self-organized phase separation. In some parameter regions, the singlet rungs form a Wigner-like lattice in the triplet-rung host. There are three types of elementary excitations in this modulation phase, i.e., the spinons in a triplet domain, the broken singlet rungs and the deformation of the Wigner-like lattice. The flux phase induced by an external magnetic field in the rung-dimerized phase is also discus…
The ground-state phase diagram of Heisenberg spin-1/2 system on a two-leg ladder with rung alternation is studied by combining analytical approaches with numerical simulations. For the case of ferromagnetic leg exchanges a unique ferrimagnetic ground state emerges, whereas for the case of antiferromagnetic leg exchanges several different ground states are stabilized depending on the ratio between exchanges along legs and rungs. For the more general case of a honeycomb-ladder model for the case of ferromagnetic leg exchanges besides usual rung-singlet and saturated ferromagnetic states we obtai…
Using continuous unitary transformations (CUT) we calculate the one-triplet gap for the antiferromagnetic S=1/2 two-leg spin ladder with additional four-spin exchange interactions in a high order series expansion about the limit of isolated rungs. By applying a novel extrapolation technique we calculate the transition line between the rung-singlet phase and a spontaneously dimerized phase with dimers on the legs. Using this efficient extrapolation technique we are able to analyze the crossover from strong rung coupling to weakly coupled chains.
We investigate a spin-$1/2$ two-leg honeycomb ladder with frustrating next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) coupling along the legs, which is equivalent to two $J_1$-$J_2$ spin chains coupled with $J_\perp$ at odd rungs. The full parameter region of the model is systematically studied using conventional and infinite density-matrix renormalization group as well as bosonization. The rich phase diagram consists of five distinct phases: A Haldane phase, a NNN-Haldane phase and a staggered dimer phase when $J_{\perp} < 0$; a rung singlet phase and a columnar dimer phase when $J_{\perp} > 0$. An interesting r…
We study the antiferromagnetic spin-half Heisenberg ladder in the presence of an additional frustrating rung spin which is motivated and relevant also for the description of real two-dimensional materials such as the two-dimensional trimer magnet Ba$_4$Ir$_3$O$_{10}$. We study the zero-temperature phase diagram, where we combine numerical and analytical methods into an overall consistent description. All numerical simulations are also accompanied by studies of the dynamical spin structure factor obtained via the density matrix renormalization group. Overall, we find in the regime of strong run…
We report results of a new analysis for the low-temperature structure of alpha'-NaV2O5 from synchrotron x-ray diffraction experiments. We confirm the existence of two inequivalent ladder structures in each vanadium layer. Based on our structural data we perform a bond-valence calculation for the vanadium sites in the low temperature state. Due to an asymmetric charge ordering we obtain only two different vanadium valences despite the three inequivalent sites. This explains the 51V-NMR observation of only two resonant peaks in the charge ordered phase. By use of a Slater-Koster method to obtain…
An integrable spin-ladder model with nearest-neighbor exchanges and biquadratic interactions is proposed. With the Bethe ansatz solutions of the model hamiltonian, it is found that there are three possible phases in the ground state, i.e., a rung-dimerized phase with a spin gap, and two massless phases. The possible fixed points of the system and the quantum critical behavior at the critical point $J=J_+^c$ are discussed.
We investigate the properties of antiferromagnetic spin-S ladders with the help of local Berry phases defined by imposing a twist on one or a few local bonds. In gapped systems with time reversal symmetry, these Berry phases are quantized, hence able in principle to characterize different phases. In the case of a fully frustrated ladder where the total spin on a rung is a conserved quantity that changes abruptly upon increasing the rung coupling, we show that two Berry phases are relevant to detect such phase transitions: the rung Berry phase defined by imposing a twist on one rung coupling, a…
We study two-leg S=1/2 ladders with general isotropic exchange interactions between spins on neighboring rungs, whose ground state can be found exactly in a form of finitely correlated (matrix product) wave function. Two families of models admitting an exact solution are found: one yields translationally invariant ground states and the other describes spontaneously dimerized models with twofold degenerate ground state. Several known models with exact ground states can be obtained as particular cases from the general solution of the first family, which includes also a set of models with only bi…
We study the ground-state phase diagram of two-component fermions loaded in a ladder-like lattice at half filling in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. For repulsive fermions with unidirectional spin-orbit coupling along the legs we identify a Néel state which is separated from rung-singlet and ferromagnetic states by Ising phase transition lines. These lines cross for maximal spin-orbit coupling and a direct Gaussian phase transition between rung-singlet and ferro phases is realized. For the case of Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling, besides the rung singlet phases two distinct striped ferrom…
We present a family of spin ladder models which admit exact solution for the ground state and exhibit non-Haldane spin liquid properties as predicted recently by Nersesyan and Tsvelik [Phys. Rev. Lett. v.78, 3939 (1997)], and study their excitation spectrum using a simple variational ansatz. The elementary excitation is neither a magnon nor a spinon, but a pair of propagating triplet or singlet solitons connecting two spontaneously dimerized ground states. Second-order phase transitions separate this phase from the Haldane phase and the rung-dimer phase.
The ground state properties of spin-1/2 ladders are studied, emphasizing the role of frustration and ring exchange coupling. We present a unified field theory for ladders with general coupling constants and geometry. Rich phase diagrams can be deduced by using a renormalization group calculation for ladders with in--chain next nearest neighbor interactions and plaquette ring exchange coupling. In addition to established phases such as Haldane, rung singlet, and dimerized phases, we also observe a surprising instability towards an incommensurate phase for weak interchain couplings, which is cha…
We study a two-leg antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 ladder in the presence of a staggered magnetic field. We consider two parameter regimes: strong (weak) coupling along the legs and weak (strong) coupling along the rungs. In both cases, the staggered field drives the Haldane spin-liquid phase of the ladder towards a Gaussian quantum criticality. In a generalized spin ladder with a non-Haldane, spontaneously dimerized phase, the staggered magnetic field induces an Ising quantum critical regime. In the vicinity of the critical lines, we derive low-energy effective field theories and use these descrip…
We perform a systematic investigation on the ground state of an asymmetric two-leg spin ladder (where exchange couplings of the legs are unequal) with ferromagnetic (FM) nearest-neighbor interaction and diagonal anti-ferromagnetic frustration using the Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) method. When the ladder is strongly asymmetric with moderate frustration, a magnetic canted state is observed between a FM state and a singlet dimerized state. The phase boundaries are dependent on the asymmetric strength $α_{a}$. On the other hand, when the asymmetric strength is intermediate, a so-ca…
The interplay between Kondo effect, indirect magnetic interaction and geometrical frustration is studied in the Kondo lattice on the one-dimensional zigzag ladder. Using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG), the ground state and various short- and long-range spin- and density-correlation functions are calculated for the model at half-filling as a function of the antiferromagnetic Kondo interaction down to $J=0.3t$ where $t$ is the nearest-neighbor hopping on the zigzag ladder. Geometrical frustration is shown to lead to at least two critical points: Starting from the strong-$J$ limi…
The spin-1/2 transverse field two-leg Ising ladder with nearest-neighbor exchange and plaquette four-spin interaction $J_{4}$ is studied analytically and numerically with the density matrix renormalization group approach. The quantum phase diagram in the transverse field $B$ versus $J_{4}$ plane has been obtained. There are three different phases: a paramagnetic (PM) phase for high values of the transverse field and, for low values of $B$, a ferromagnetic (FM) ordered phase for small $J_{4}$ and a dimerized-rung (DR) phase for large negative values of $J_{4}$. All phases are separated by quant…
