Anomalous thermal conductivity of frustrated Heisenberg spin-chains and ladders

Hamid Arian Zad, N.S. Ananikian

David L. Huber

Fabian Heidrich‐Meisner, A. Honecker, D. C. Cabra +1 more

In a recent letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 156603 (2002); cond-mat/0201300], Alvarez and Gros have numerically analyzed the Drude weight for thermal transport in spin ladders and frustrated chains of up to 14 sites and have proposed that it remains finite in the thermodynamic limit. In this comment, we argue that this conclusion cannot be sustained if the finite-size analysis is taken to larger system sizes.

Jose Vicente Alvarez, Claudius Gros

We study the thermal transport properties of several quantum-spin chains and ladders. We find indications for a diverging thermal conductivity at finite temperatures for the models examined. The temperature at which the nondiverging prefactor kappa((th))(T) peaks is, in general, substantially lower than the temperature at which the corresponding specific heat c(V)(T) is maximal. We show that this result of the microscopic approach leads to a substantial reduction for estimates of the magnetic mean-free path lambda extracted by analyzing recent experiments, as compared to similar analyses by phenomenological theories.

Keiji Saito, Seiji Miyashita

Fabian Heidrich‐Meisner, A. Honecker, D. C. Cabra +1 more