arXiv:1112.4307 · Physical Review Letters
Spectral and Thermodynamic Properties of a Strong-Leg Quantum Spin Ladder
D. Schmidiger, Pierre Bouillot, S. Mühlbauer, S. N. Gvasaliya, Corinna Kollath, Thierry Giamarchi, A. Zheludev
Abstract
The strong-leg S=1/2 Heisenberg spin ladder system (C(7)H(10)N)(2)CuBr(4) is investigated using density matrix renormalization group calculations, inelastic neutron scattering, and bulk magnetothermodynamic measurements. Measurements showed qualitative differences compared to the strong-rung case. A long-lived two-triplon bound state is confirmed to persist across most of the Brillouin zone in a zero field. In applied fields, in the Tomonaga-Luttinger spin-liquid phase, elementary excitations are attractive, rather than repulsive. In the presence of weak interladder interactions, the strong-leg system is considerably more prone to three-dimensional ordering.