quantum spin chains and ladders with random exchange coupling are studied by using an effective low-energy field theory and transfer matrix methods. Effects of the nonlocal correlations of exchange couplings are investigated numerically. In particular we calculate localization length of magnons, density of states, correlation functions and multifractal exponents as a function of the correlation length of the exchange couplings. As the correlation length increases, there occurs a “phase transition ” and the above quantities exhibit different behaviors in two phases. This suggests that the strong-randomness fixed point of the random spin chains and random-singlet state get unstable by the long-range correlations of the random exchange couplings. 1
quantum spin chains and ladders with random exchange coupling are studied by using an effective low-energy field theory and transfer matrix methods. Effects of the nonlocal correlations of exchange couplings are investigated numerically. In particular we calculate localization length of magnons, density of states, correlation functions and multifractal exponents as a function of the correlation length of the exchange couplings. As the correlation length increases, there occurs a “phase transition ” and the above quantities exhibit different behaviors in two phases. This suggests that the strong-randomness fixed point of the random spin chains and random-singlet state get unstable by the long-range correlations of the random exchange couplings. 1
The properties of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic chains with various types of random exchange coupling are studied via an asymptotically exact decimation renormalization-group transformation, which is a generalization of that introduced by Dasgupta and Ma. Random-singlet phases occur in which each spin is paired with one other spin that may be very far away; more exotic phases also occur. The behavior of typical and mean correlation functions is analyzed and found to be very different, with very small sets of spins dominating the latter at long distances as well as the low-temperature thermodynamics. Some of the phase transitions that occur between antiferromagnetically ordered phases and random singlet or other antiferromagnetic phases are also analyzed. For example, if a small uniaxial anisotropy perturbation is added to a random Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain, a transition occurs from a random-singlet phase to an Ising antiferromagnetic phase, as the anisotropy changes sign from easy plane to easy axis. The staggered magnetization vanishes at the transition with critical exponent \ensuremath{\beta}=8/(1+ \ensuremath{\surd}7 ). Possible implications for the properties of random quantum magnetic systems in higher dimensions are briefly discussed.
We analyze an anisotropic spin-1/2 two-leg ladder in the presence of various types of random perturbations. The generic phase diagram for the pure system, in a way similar to spin one chains, consists of four phases: an antiferromagnet, a Haldane gap or a singlet phase (depending on the sign of interchain coupling), and two XY phases designated by XY1 and XY2. The effects of disorder depend crucially on whether it preserves XY symmetry (random field along z and random exchange) or not (random anisotropy or random XY fields). In all cases we computed the new phase diagram and the correlation length for the disordered system. The ladder exhibits a remarkable stability to disorder with XY symmetry. Not only the singlet phases but also the massless XY1 phase are totally unaffected by disorder in stark contrast with the single chain case. Even in the presence of an external magnetic field breaking the spin gap most of the phase diagram (including the XY point) remains unaffected by the disorder, again in opposition with the single chain case. This stabilization towards disorder is similar, albeit stronger, to the one occurring for fermionic ladders. On the other hand, the XY2 phase is very strongly suppressed. Disorder breaking XY symmetry has much stronger effects and most of the phases at the exception of the singlet one are now destroyed. Interestingly, the disordered XY1 phase has a much shorter correlation length than the disordered XY2 phase contrarily with the case of perturbations preserving the rotation symmetry around the z axis. The ladder system is thus in fact much more anisotropic than its single chain counterpart with identical exchanges. Finally we examine the case of strong disorder or weak interchain exchange for XY symmetric disorder. Close to the isotropic point, when the interchain exchange is increased the system undergoes a transition between two decoupled disordered spin-1/2 chains to a singlet ladder unaffected by disorder. For more XY like systems, the transition occurs in two steps with a nondisordered XY1 phase occurring between the decoupled chains and the singlet phase. Comparison with other disordered gapped systems such as spin one chains is discussed.
The random antiferromagnetic spin-1∕2 XX and XXZ chain is studied numerically for varying strength of the disorder, using exact diagonalization and stochastic series expansion methods. The spin-spin correlation function as well as the stiffness display a clear crossover from the pure behavior (no disorder) to the infinite randomness fixed point or random singlet behavior predicted by the real space renormalization group. The crossover length scale is shown to diverge as $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\sim}{\mathcal{D}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$, where D is the variance of the random bonds. Our estimates for the exponent $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ agrees well within the error bars with the one for the localization length exponent emerging within an analytical bosonization calculation. Exact diagonalization and stochastic series expansion results for the string correlation function are also presented.
Quasi-one-dimensional spin-Peierls and spin-ladder systems are characterized by a gap in the spin-excitation spectrum, which can be modeled at low energies by that of Dirac fermions with a mass. In the presence of disorder, these systems can still be described by a Dirac fermion model, but with a random mass. Some peculiar properties, like the Dyson singularity in the density of states, are well known and attributed to creation of low-energy states due to the disorder. We take one step further and study single-particle correlations by means of Berezinskii's diagram technique. We find that, at low energy $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$, the single-particle Green function decays in real space like $G(x,\ensuremath{\epsilon})\ensuremath{\propto}{(1/x)}^{3/2}$. It follows that at these energies the correlations in the disordered system are strong --- even stronger than in the pure system without the gap. At distances $x\ensuremath{\sim}{L}_{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}\ensuremath{\propto}{\mathrm{ln}}^{2}(1/\ensuremath{\epsilon})$, the Green function crosses over to a standard exponential decay. The scale ${L}_{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}$ is different from the Thouless localization length ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}\ensuremath{\propto}\mathrm{ln}(1/\ensuremath{\epsilon})$. Additionally, we study the effects of boundaries on the local density of states. We find that the latter is logarithmically (in the energy) enhanced close to the boundary. This enhancement decays into the bulk as 1/x saturating at $x\ensuremath{\sim}{L}_{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}.$ We also discuss some implications of these results for the spin systems and their relation to the investigations based on the real-space renormalization group approach.
We introduce and implement a reformulation of the strong-disorder renormalization group method in real space, well suited to study bond-disordered antiferromagnetic power-law coupled quantum spin chains. We apply it to a chain of randomly placed spins coupled by power-law long-range interaction with power $\ensuremath{\alpha}$. First, keeping only interactions between adjacent spins, we derive the Master equation and confirm that it is solved by the infinite randomness fixed-point distribution. Then, we derive the master equation for power-law long-range interaction between all spins for any anisotropy $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ ranging from the XX limit, $\ensuremath{\gamma}=0$, to the isotropic Heisenberg limit, $\ensuremath{\gamma}=1,$ which corresponds to a tight-binding chain of disordered long-range interacting fermions with long-range hopping. We thereby show that the distribution function of couplings J smaller than renormalization scale $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ flows to the strong-disorder fixed-point distribution of finite width $2\ensuremath{\alpha}.$ We find only small corrections to that distribution, which depend on power exponent $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and coupling anisotropy $\ensuremath{\gamma}.$ As a consequence, the low-temperature magnetic susceptibility diverges with an anomalous power law. The distribution of singlet lengths l is found to decay as ${l}^{\ensuremath{-}2}$. The entanglement entropy of a subsystem of length n increases in the ground state logarithmically for all $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and $\ensuremath{\gamma}$. After a global quantum quench, the entanglement entropy increases with time logarithmically as $S(t)\ensuremath{\sim}ln(t)/(2\ensuremath{\alpha})$.
We present a manifestly rotational invariant formulation of the matrix product method valid for spin chains and ladders. We apply it to two-legged spin ladders with spins , 1 and and different magnetic structures labelled by the exchange coupling constants, which can be ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic along the legs and the rungs of the ladder. We compute ground-state energy densities, correlation lengths and string order parameters. We present numerical evidence of the duality properties of the three different nonferromagnetic spin ladders. We show that the long-range topological order characteristic of isolated spin 1 chains is broken by the interchain coupling. The string order correlation function decays exponentially with a finite correlation length that we compute. A physical picture of the spin 1 ladder is given in terms of a collection of resonating spin 1 chains. Finally, for ladders with spin equal to or greater than we define a class of AKLT states whose matrix product coefficients are given by 9- j symbols.