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arXiv:1910.03064 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Spinon confinement and deconfinement in spin-1 chains

Laurens Vanderstraeten, Elisabeth Wybo, Natalia Chepiga, Frank Verstraete, Frédéric Mila

Published Mar 20, 2020• 21 citations
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Abstract

Motivated by the rich phase diagrams recently unveiled in frustrated spin-1 chains with competing next-nearest-neighbor and four-spin interactions, we investigate the nature of the elementary excitations of spin-1 chains in the vicinity of phase transitions using the matrix-product state (MPS) representation of elementary excitations. First, we show that both spinons and magnons naturally arise in $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ invariant spin chains when describing ground states and elementary excitations using MPSs. Then we investigate the nature of the elementary excitations across the first-order transition between the Haldane phase and the topologically trivial next-nearest-neighbor Haldane phase. We show explicitly that spinons deconfine at the transition, and we calculate the dispersion of these deconfined spinons with MPSs. We also show that, immediately away from the transition line, spinons confine, forming dispersive spinon/antispinon bound states on both sides of the transition. Finally, we show that deconfined spinons also appear at the transition between the Haldane phase and the spontaneously dimerized phase when this transition is first order.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.101.115138

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Motivated by the rich phase diagrams recently unveiled in frustrated spin-1 chains with competing next-nearest-neighbor and four-spin interactions, we investigate the nature of the elementary excitations of spin-1 chains in the vicinity of phase transitions using the matrix-product state (MPS) representation of elementary excitations. First, we show that both spinons and magnons naturally arise in SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2) invariant spin chains when describing ground states and elementary excitations using MPSs. Then we investigate the nature of the elementary excitations across the first-order transition between the Haldane phase and the topologically trivial next-nearest-neighbor Haldane phase. We show explicitly that spinons deconfine at the transition, and we calculate the dispersion of these deconfined spinons with MPSs. We also show that, immediately away from the transition line, spinons confine, forming dispersive spinon/antispinon bound states on both sides of the transition. Finally, we show that deconfined spinons also appear at the transition between the Haldane phase and the spontaneously dimerized phase when this transition is first order.
We investigate the nature of low-energy excitations in a spin chain with antiferrmomagnetic nearest-neighbor J1J_1J1​, next-nearest-neighbor J2J_2J2​, and three-site J3J_3J3​ interactions using the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group and the single mode approximation techniques. In the absence of the J2J_2J2​ interaction, we identify clear distinctions in the spectral functions in the fully dimerized phase across the exactly dimerized line for different magnitudes of the spins. In contrast to the spin-1/21/21/2 chain, where the spinon continuum dominates the spectral functions, the magnon modes are prominent in the spectral functions of the spin-111 and spin-3/23/23/2 chains. Through single mode approximation and valence bond solid approaches, we disentangle magnon and spinon contributions to the spectral functions. After including the J2J_2J2​ interactions, for the spin-111 chain we trace the evolution of the dynamical structure factor along the phase transition line between the Haldane phase and the fully dimerized phase. We find that the excitation spectrum is a continuum along this line and the spectral gap closes as the order of the transition changes from first order to second order. Along the line of first-order transitions, the spinon-like domain walls are deconfined, and the model exhibits their confinement into discrete bound states away from the transition line. A similar phenomenon occurs in the spin-3/23/23/2 chain across the phase transition between partially dimerized to fully dimerized phases, revealing a universal spinon confinement phenomenon across first-order phase transitions. This study presents the dynamical structure factor corresponding to the ground state phase diagram and establishes a unified quasiparticle framework for understanding the fundamental nature of excitations across distinct quantum phases in frustrated J1J_1J1​-J2J_2J2​-J3J_3J3​ Heisenberg spin chains.
Using a time-dependent density matrix renormalization group approach, we study the dynamical structure factor of the ${J}_{1}\ensuremath{-}{J}_{2}$ spin-1 chain. As J2{J}_{2}J2​ increases, the magnon mode develops incommensurability. The system undergoes a first-order transition at J2=0.76J1{J}_{2}=0.76\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{J}_{1}J2​=0.76J1​, and at that point, domain walls lead to a continuum of fractional quasiparticles or spinons. By studying small variations in J2{J}_{2}J2​ around the transition point, we observe the confinement of spinons into bound states in the spectral function and find a smooth evolution of the spectrum into magnon modes away from the phase transition. We employ the single-mode approximation to accurately account for the dispersion of the magnon mode away from the phase transition and describe the associated continua and bound states. We extend the single-mode approximation to describe the dispersion of a spinon at the phase transition point and obtain its dispersion throughout the Brillouin zone. This allows us to relate the incommensurability at and around the transition point to the competition between a negative nearest-neighbor hopping amplitude and a positive next-nearest-neighbor one for the domain wall.
We use extensive density-matrix renormalization-group calculations to show that a classification of SU(n)\text{SU}(n)SU(n) spin chains with regard to the existence of spinon confinement and hence a Haldane gap obtained previously for valence bond solid models applies to SU(n)\text{SU}(n)SU(n) Heisenberg chains as well. In particular, we observe spinon confinement due to a next-nearest-neighbor interaction in the SU(4) representation 10 chain.
To begin with, we introduce several exact models for SU(3) spin chains: First is a translationally invariant parent Hamiltonian involving four-site interactions for the trimer chain, with a threefold degenerate ground state. We provide numerical evidence that the elementary excitations of this model transform under representation 3‾\overline{\mathbf{3}}3 of SU(3) if the original spins of the model transform under representation 3. Second is a family of parent Hamiltonians for valence bond solids of SU(3) chains with spin representations 6, 10, and 8 on each lattice site. We argue that of these three models, only the latter two exhibit spinon confinement and, hence, a Haldane gap in the excitation spectrum. We generalize some of our models to SU(n)\mathrm{SU}(n)SU(n). Finally, we use the emerging rules for the construction of valence bond solid states to argue that models of antiferromagnetic chains of SU(n)\mathrm{SU}(n)SU(n) spins, in general, possess a Haldane gap if the spins transform under a representation corresponding to a Young tableau consisting of a number of boxes $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ which is divisible by nnn. If $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ and nnn have no common divisor, the spin chain will support deconfined spinons and not exhibit a Haldane gap. If $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ and nnn have a common divisor different from nnn, it will depend on the specifics of the model including the range of the interaction.
We report on a detailed investigation of the spin-$1 {J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{3}$ Heisenberg model, a frustrated model with nearest-neighbor coupling J1{J}_{1}J1​, next-nearest neighbor coupling J2{J}_{2}J2​, and a three-site interaction ${J}_{3}\left[({\mathbf{S}}_{i\ensuremath{-}1}\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}{\mathbf{S}}_{i})({\mathbf{S}}_{i}\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}{\mathbf{S}}_{i+1})+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.\right]$ previously studied in [Phys. Rev. B 93, 241108(R) (2016)]. Using density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and exact diagonalizations, we show that the phase boundaries between the Haldane phase, the next-nearest neighbor Haldane phase, and the dimerized phase can be very accurately determined by combining the information deduced from the dimerization, the ground-state energy, the entanglement spectrum and the Berry phase. By a careful investigation of the finite-size spectrum, we also show that the transition between the next-nearest neighbor Haldane phase and the dimerized phase is in the Ising universality class all along the critical line. Furthermore, we justify the conformal embedding of the SU(2)2\mathrm{SU}{(2)}_{2}SU(2)2​ Wess-Zumino-Witten conformal field theory in terms of a boson and an Ising field, and we explicitly derive a number of consequences of this embedding for the spectrum along the SU(2)2\mathrm{SU}{(2)}_{2}SU(2)2​ transition line between the Haldane phase and the dimerized phase. We also show that the solitons along the first-order transition line between the Haldane phase and the dimerized phase carry a spin-1/2, while the domain walls between different dimerization domains inside the dimerized phase carry a spin 1. Finally, we show that short-range correlations change character in the Haldane and dimerized phases through disorder and Lifshitz lines, as well as through the development of short-range dimer correlations in the Haldane phase, leading to a remarkably rich phase diagram.