We study the ground-state spin correlations in the gapless incommensurate regime of a
S=1/2 XXZ chain and a two-leg antiferromagnetic ladder under a magnetic field, in which the gapless excitations form a Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid. We calculate numerically the two-spin correlation functions and the local magnetization in the two models using the density-matrix renormalization-group method. By fitting the numerical results for an open
XXZ chain of 100 spins to correlation functions of a Gaussian model, we determine the TL-liquid parameter K and the amplitudes of the correlation functions. The value of K estimated from the fits is in excellent agreement with the exact value obtained from the Bethe ansatz. We apply the same method to the open ladder consisting of 200 spins and determine the dependence of K on the magnetization M. The $K\ensuremath{-}M$ relation changes drastically depending on the ratio of the coupling constants in the leg and rung directions. We also discuss implications of these results to experiments on the nuclear spin relaxation rate
1/T1 and dynamical spin structure factors.
Understanding collective phases of strongly correlated quantum magnets relies on theoretically tractable model systems with precise microscopic control. Antiferromagnetic spin ladders provide such a setting, hosting field-tunable gapped and gapless phases at half filling and unconventional pairing tendencies upon doping. Here, we realize a programmable Heisenberg spin ladder in a half-filled germanium quantum dot array featuring site-resolved, continuously tunable exchange interactions. Under a fixed magnetic field, we vary the rung and leg coupling to map the rung-singlet, canted antiferromagnetic, and fully polarized phases. Hamiltonian-learning protocols combining equilibrium and dynamical measurements quantitatively characterize the ladder, incorporating spin-orbit interactions to reproduce the observed crossover behavior. Measurements of higher-order spin correlators -- including four-point correlations inaccessible to conventional bulk probes -- reveal signatures of the underlying phase structure despite the finite size. Our results establish germanium quantum dot arrays as a controllable platform for quantum magnetism, opening routes to investigate unconventional superconductivity in doped ladders.
We theoretically study the magnetic excitations in a frustrated two-leg spin-ladder system, in which antiferromagnetic exchange interactions act on the nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor bonds in the leg direction, and on the nearest-neighbor bonds in the rung direction. A dynamical spin correlation function at zero temperature is calculated using the dynamical density-matrix renormalization-group method for possible magnetic phases, i.e., columnar-dimer and rung-singlet phases. The columnar-dimer phase is characterized by multispinon excitations with a spin gap, whereas the rung-singlet phase is dominated by the triplet excitation in the rung direction. One major difference found between these two phases appears in the spectral weight of magnetic excitations, in particular, the bonding and antibonding modes in the rung direction. Therefore, we can distinguish one phase from the other by the difference in the spectral weight. Furthermore, we examine the effect of frustration on both modes in the rung-singlet phase with a perturbation theory from the strong coupling limit. The antibonding mode is shown to be stable against frustration, and a wave number with minimum excitation energy is shifted from being commensurate to being incommensurate. In contrast, the bonding mode is merged into the continuum excitation of multiple triplet excitations by increasing frustration. By comparing our results with inelastic neutron scattering experiments for BiCu
2PO
6, the magnitude of the magnetic exchange interactions and the ground state will be determined.
Using matrix product state techniques we study the nonequilibrium dynamical response of the half-filled Hubbard ladder when subject to an optical pump. Optical pumping offers a way of producing and manipulating new strongly correlated phenomena by suppressing existing magnetic correlations. The ladder allows the effects of pump directionality to be investigated, and compared to a single chain it has strong spin-charge coupling and a fully gapped excitation spectrum, promising different nonequilibrium physics. We compute time-dependent correlations, including the nonequilibrium dynamical structure factors for spin and charge. By deriving a combined spin-charge sum rule that applies both in and out-of-equilibrium, we show that spectral weight is pumped directly from the antiferromagnetic spin response into a low energy ω ∼ 0 charge response below the Mott gap. The transfer of weight is pump direction dependent: pumping directed along the legs disrupts magnetic correlations more than pumping in the rung-direction, even if the post-pump energy density is similar. The charge correlation length is dramatically enhanced by the pump, whilst the spin correlations are most strongly suppressed at nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor spacings. After the pump the system is in a nonthermal correlated metallic state, with gapless charge excitations and approximately equal spin and charge correlation lengths, emphasizing the importance of treating these degrees of freedom on an equal footing in nonequilibrium systems.
The zero-temperature dynamical spin-spin correlation functions are calculated for the spin-
21 two-leg antiferromagnetic Heisenberg ladder in a magnetic field above the lower critical field
Hc1. The dynamical structure factors are calculated, which exhibit both massless modes and massive excitations. These modes appear in different sectors characterized by the parity in the rung direction and by the momentum in the direction of the chains. The structure factors have power-law singularities at the lower edges of their support. The results are also applicable to the spin-1 Heisenberg chain. The implications are briefly discussed for the various correlation functions and the $\ensuremath{\pi}$ resonance in the SO(5) symmetric ladder model.
The frustrated ladder with alternate ferromagnetic(F) exchange
−JF and AF exchange
JA to first neighbors and F exchange
−JL to second neighbors is studied by exact diagonalization (ED) and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations in systems of
2N spins-1/2 with periodic boundary conditions. The ground state is a singlet
(S=0) and the singlet-triplet gap
εT is finite for the exchanges considered. Spin-1/2 string correlation functions
g1(N) and
g2(N) are defined for an even number
N of consecutive spins in systems with two spins per unit cell; the ladder has string order
g2(∞)>0 and
g1(∞)=0. The minimum
N∗ of
g2(N) is related to the range of ground-state spin correlations. Convergence to
g2(∞) is from below, and
g1(N) decreases exponentially for
N≥N∗. Singlet valence bond (VB) diagrams account for the size dependencies. The frustrated ladder at special values of
JF,
JL and
JA reduces to well-known models such as the spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnet and the
J1−J2 model, among others. Numerical analysis of ladders matches previous results for spin-1 gaps or string correlation functions and extends them to spin-1/2 systems. The nondegenerate singlet ground state of ladder is a bond-order wave, a Kekulé VB diagrams at
JL=JF/2≤JA, that is reversed on interchanging
−JF and
JA. Inversion symmetry is spontaneously broken in the dimer phase of the
J1−J2 model where the Kekulé diagrams are the doubly degenerate ground states at
J2/J1=1/2.