Low-temperature thermodynamic properties of a random anisotropic antiferromagnetic chain

Abstract

The low-temperature thermodynamic properties of a spin-\textonehalf{} one-dimensional random anisotropic (Heisenberg-Ising) antiferromagnet described by the Hamiltonian $H=\ensuremath{\Sigma}{i}^{}{J}_{i}({\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}^{i}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}^{i+1}+{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{y}^{i}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{y}^{i+1}+\ensuremath{\gamma}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{z}^{i}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{z}^{i+1})$ are studied as a function of disorder and anisotropy. The ${J}_{i}>~0$ are independent random variables obeying a probability distribution $P(J)$, and $0<~\ensuremath{\gamma}<~\ensuremath{\infty}$. The approach used is a numerical implementation of a real-space renormalization-group (RG) method previously introduced. The isotropic Heisenberg case ($\ensuremath{\gamma}=1$), the $\mathrm{XY}$ case ($\ensuremath{\gamma}=0$). and the Ising case ($\ensuremath{\gamma}=\ensuremath{\infty}$) are fixed points of the RG transformation. It is found that in the $\mathrm{XY}$ region $\ensuremath{\gamma}<~1$, including the Heisenberg point, the system exhibits singular behavior in the thermodynamic properties for arbitrary probability distributions for the couplings. For the $\mathrm{XY}$ limit ($\ensuremath{\gamma}=0$) this is in agreement with known exact results. The functional form for the low-temperature susceptibility is found to be $\ensuremath{\chi}\ensuremath{\sim}\frac{1}{(T{\mathrm{ln}}^{m}(\frac{T}{{T}_{0}}))}$ in the entire region $0<~\ensuremath{\gamma}<~1$ for arbitrary probability distributions. In the Ising region ($\ensuremath{\gamma}>1$) the susceptibility shows an approximate power-law divergence for small anisotropy but goes eventually to zero as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$. Possible relevance of these results to recent experiments on Qn${(\mathrm{TCNQ})}_{2}$ is discussed.