Haldane conjectures the fundamental difference in the energy spectrum of the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic (HAF) of the spin S chain is that the half-integer and the integer S chain have gapless and gapped energy spectrums, respectively. The ground state (gs) of the HAF spin-1/2 and spin-1 chains have a quasi-long-range and short-range correlation, respectively. We study the effect of the exchange interaction between an HAF spin-1/2 and an HAF spin-1 chain forming a normal ladder system and its gs properties. The inter-chain exchange interaction J⊥ can be either ferromagnetic (FM) or antiferromagnetic (AFM). Using the density matrix renormalization group method, we show that in the weak AFM/FM coupling limit of J⊥, the system behaves like two decoupled chains. However, in the large AFM J⊥ limit, the whole system can be visualized as weakly coupled spin-1/2 and spin-1 pairs which behave like an effective spin-1/2 HAF chain. In the large FM J⊥ limit, coupled spin-1/2 and spin-1 pairs can form pseudo spin-3/2 and the whole system behaves like an effective spin-3/2 HAF chain. We also derive the effective model Hamiltonian in both strong FM and AFM rung exchange coupling limits.
By using the method of exact diagonalization, the properties of the spin-1/2 ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic alternating Heisenberg chain are investigated. The spin-spin correlation, the sublattice magnetizations, the spin excitation spectrum and the magnetization curve of the model are calculated and compared with the corresponding properties of the mixed spin chain. The results show that the behaviors of the alternating Heisenberg chain are equivalent to those of the mixed spin chain when the ratio of antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic coupling strength is very small. So, the properties of the mixed spin chain can be analyzed by using the spin-1/2 ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic alternating Heisenberg chain.
We report inelastic time-of-flight and triple-axis neutron scattering measurements of the excitation spectrum of the coupled antiferromagnetic spin-1 Heisenberg chain system
CsNiCl3. Measurements over a wide range of wave-vector transfers along the chain confirm that above
TNCsNiCl3 is in a quantum-disordered phase with an energy gap in the excitation spectrum. The spin correlations fall off exponentially with increasing distance with a correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}=4.0(2)$ sites at
T=6.2K. This is shorter than the correlation length for an antiferromagnetic spin-1 Heisenberg chain at this temperature, suggesting that the correlations perpendicular to the chain direction and associated with the interchain coupling lower the single-chain correlation length. A multiparticle continuum is observed in the quantum-disordered phase in the region in reciprocal space where antiferromagnetic fluctuations are strongest, extending in energy up to twice the maximum of the dispersion of the well-defined triplet excitations. We show that the continuum satisfies the Hohenberg-Brinkman sum rule. The dependence of the multiparticle continuum on the chain wave vector resembles that of the two-spinon continuum in antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains. This suggests the presence of spin-1/2 degrees of freedom in
CsNiCl3 for
T< 12K, possibly caused by multiply frustrated interchain interactions.