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Journal of Physics C Solid State Physics

The spectrum of the continuous isotropic quantum Heisenberg chain: quantum solitons as magnon bound states

Hans C. Fogedby

Published Mar 30, 1980• 48 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The continuous Heisenberg chain is quantised semiclassically. The spectrum consists of unit spin bosons (magnons) and integer spin bosons (solitons) with dispersion laws E=JS(ka) 2 and E n =16JS 3 sin 2 (ka/4S)/n (n=1...) respectively. It is proposed that the n=1 soliton is the magnon and that the spectrum is exact, including all quantum corrections. For S= 1 / 2 the spectrum agrees with results for the discrete chain and it is inferred that the soliton is a multi-magnon bound state.

DOI
10.1088/0022-3719/13/9/005

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•Feb 9, 2016•1 citation
The continuous Heisenberg chain is quantised semiclassically. The spectrum consists of unit spin bosons (magnons) and integer spin bosons (solitons) with dispersion laws E=JS(ka) 2 and E n =16JS 3 sin 2 (ka/4S)/n (n=1...) respectively. It is proposed that the n=1 soliton is the magnon and that the spectrum is exact, including all quantum corrections. For S= 1 / 2 the spectrum agrees with results for the discrete chain and it is inferred that the soliton is a multi-magnon bound state.
The permanent profile solutions of the continuous classical Heisenberg chain is reviewed and the author expounds on the application of the inverse scattering method. Extending and amplifying the work of Takhtajan (1977) he exhibits the 'diagonal' action angle representation of the model. The spectrum of the Hamiltonian is exhausted by a magnon band and a soliton band. The magnons have no internal degrees of freedom and can be characterised by the dispersion law E=p 2 . Like the sine Gordon doublet, the solitons have internal structure, they carry a continuous angular momentum m, and are characterised by the dispersion law E=16 sin 2 (p/4)/ mod m mod , in accordance with Tjon and Wright (1977). The continuous Heisenberg chain is a completely integrable Hamiltonian system possessing an infinite number of constants of motion. The recursive procedure for the determination of the conserved integrated densities is established.
The authors develop a path-integral formalism to obtain the semiclassical quantum spectrum of the pulse soliton with an internal degree of freedom in the one-dimensional continuous Heisenberg ferromagnet with an easy axis. No restriction is imposed on the spin magnitude S. For S=1/2, the pulse soliton yields the same quantum spectrum as that of the S=1/2 lattice Heisenberg-Ising ferromagnet obtained by the Bethe ansatz method. This agreement supports a plausible particle picture of the multimagnon bound state. For S>1/2, the present semiclassical spectrum can also be interpreted, aside from its prefactor, in terms of an underlying spin S(>1/2) quantum lattice model if the cut-off condition for the wave-number of the soliton is taken into account.
We investigate the relation between magnon, magnon bound states, and the classical soliton solutions in the isotropic, the anisotropic-exchange, and the easy-axis ferromagnetic Heisenberg chains. The Dyson-Maleev boson representation is used to study the interaction between magnons, and bound states are investigated in terms of two-spin Green's functions. For easy-axis and anisotropic-exchange magnets, a mapping to the Bose gas with attractive $\ensuremath{\delta}$-function interactions is established, and it yields the eigenvalues of the magnon and the mmmth bound state in the weak-coupling and continuum limits. The classical limit of the two-spin Green's function reveals that, to leading order in temperature, the bound-state resonance and the associated effects on the two-magnon continuum survives. An important result is a T2{T}^{2}T2 dependence of the "binding" energy of the bound-state resonance. As a consequence, in a classical description the bound states enter only in order T2{T}^{2}T2. Finally, we quantize the soliton solutions according to the Bohr-Sommerfeld and de Broglie rules. This approach is found to be exact for the s=12s=\frac{1}{2}s=21​ isotropic Heisenberg chain and for sufficiently small wave numbers for all sss values. In the anisotropic-exchange and easy-axis models, it agrees with the results obtained from the mapping on the Bose gas, for large quantum numbers and in the easy-axis case for $s\ensuremath{\gg}\frac{1}{2}$ in addition. On this basis, we conclude that the envelope solitons considered here lead to bound-state resonances and associated effects in a classical treatment. Moreover, their semiclassical quantization gives remarkably accurate energy levels.
The z-component dynamical spin correlation function S zz (q,w) of the s= 1 / 2 anisotropic XY chain is calculated exactly in the fermion representation. S zz consists of two parts: one (S m ) represents two fermion excitations and the other (S s ) describes scattering from thermally excited fermions. In the continuum limit, S s has the structure of the solitonic part of a classical sine-Gordon correlation function, but the soliton form factor is modified by quantum effects. S m has similarities with the spin-wave continuum form of S zz an isotropic spin chains. The continuum results are compared with those for a discrete chain.
It is still an outstanding challenge to characterize and understand the topological features of strongly correlated states such as bound-states in interacting multi-particle quantum systems. Recently, bound states of elementary spin waves (magnons) in quantum magnets have been experimentally observed in quantum Heisenberg chains comprising ultracold Bose atoms in optical lattices. Here, we explore an unprecedented topological state called topological magnon bound-state in the quantum Heisenberg chain under cotranslational symmetry. We find that the cotranslational symmetry allows us to formulate a direct topological invariant for the multi-particle quantum states, which can be used to characterize the topological features of multi-magnon excitations. We calculate energy spectra, density distributions, correlations and topological invariants of the two-magnon bound-states and show the existence of topological magnon bound-states. Our study not only opens a new prospect to pursue topological bound-states, but also gives insights into the characterization and understanding of strongly interacting topological states.