Quantum spin dynamics of the axial antiferromagnetic spin-
21 XXZ chain in a longitudinal magnetic field
The infinite Heisenberg XXZ spin-
21 chain in the gapped antiferromagnetic regime has two degenerate vacua and kink topological excitations (which are also called spinons) interpolating between these vacua as elementary excitations. Application of an arbitrary weak staggered longitudinal magnetic field
h induces a long-range attractive potential between two adjacent spinons leading to their confinement into ``meson'' bound states. Exploiting the integrability of the XXZ model in the deconfined phase
h=0, we perform perturbative calculations of the energy spectra of the two-spinon bound states in the weak confinement regime at $h\ensuremath{\rightarrow}+0$, using the strength of the staggered magnetic field
h as a small parameter. Both transverse and longitudinal dynamical structure factors of the local spin operators are calculated as well in the two-spinon approximation in the weak confinement regime to the leading order in
h.
We study the tuning effect of a transverse magnetic field on the confinement of spinons in the infinite XXZ spin-1/2 chain. The spinon confinement in this model takes place in the gapped antiferromagnetic phase upon application of a staggered longitudinal magnetic field. The tuning transverse magnetic field has mutually orthogonal uniform and staggered components. The energy spectra of the two-spinon bound states (the ``mesons'') in the confinement regime are analytically calculated in this model using two different perturbative schemes. The first one applies in the extreme anisotropic (Ising) limit and employs the inverse anisotropy constant as a small parameter. The second perturbative scheme, which applies at any anisotropy in the gapped antiferromagnetic domain, exploits the integrability of the XXZ spin chain at zero magnetic field. The small parameters in the second technique are the components of the transverse, and staggered longitudinal magnetic fields. It is shown that the weak transverse magnetic field mixes the transverse and longitudinal meson modes, and leads to an avoided crossing of their energies upon increase of its strength. The explicit formulas for the two-spinon contribution to the dynamical structure factors of local spin operators are obtained as well in this model in the weak confinement regime for wave vectors close to the points
k=0 and $\ensuremath{\pi}$.
We study low-energy excitations in antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains with a staggered field which splits the spectrum into a longitudinal and a transverse branch. Bound states are found to exist inside the field induced gap in both branches. They originate from the edge effects and are inherent to spin-chain materials. The sine-Gordon scaling h(2/3)(s)[log(h(s)](1/6) (h(s), the staggered field) provides an accurate description for the gap and midgap energies in the transverse branch for S=1/2 and the midgap energies in both branches for S=3/2 over a wide range of magnetic field; however, it can fit other low-energy excitations only at much lower field. Moreover, the integer-spin S=1 chain displays scaling behavior that does not fit this scaling law. These results reveal intriguing features of magnetic excitations in spin-chain materials that deserve further investigation.