Spin wave excitations and their interactions in two-dimensional antiferromagnets

Abstract

This thesis investigates two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets, with a focus on the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ antiferromagnetic easy-axis XXZ model on a square and a honeycomb lattice. Describing the excitations and interactions of magnons in these models is of substantial interest, as magnons are the fundamental quasiparticles and can thus explain experimental observations. Already for the paradigmatic antiferromagnetic spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice, high-energy features of the magnon dispersion are understood via strong magnon-magnon interactions. Besides that, interesting high-energy features were recently observed in the honeycomb lattice, including a possible decay of the single-magnon mode. The goal of this thesis is to obtain effective descriptions of the aforementioned systems that capture the relevant features of the magnon excitations and their interactions. To study these features, this thesis employs continuous similarity transformations (CSTs), which enables a systematic derivation of an effective quasiparticle picture via so-called flow equations. The approach enables decoupling different magnon sectors and thus for investigating ground-state properties, single-magnon excitations, and multi-magnon bound states. The magnon description is derived from the non-Hermitian Dyson-Maleev representation, which describes fluctuations around a long-range magnetically ordered ground state. The flow equations are set up in momentum space, truncated by the scaling dimension, retaining only operators up to scaling dimension of two, and solved numerically. For the square lattice, a magnon-conserving effective Hamiltonian is obtained across the full anisotropy range by interpolating between the Ising limit and the Heisenberg limit. The ground-state energy, staggered magnetization, dispersion, and critical exponents are in excellent agreement with the literature, supporting the validity of CST also for gapped phases. Two-magnon excitations in the $S^z=0$ subspace comprise four bound states, which are tracked across the anisotropy range. Their successive decay into the two-magnon continuum is determined by using the inverse participation ratio. For the honeycomb lattice, the magnon-conserving CST is reliable only up to $\lambda ≲ 0.57$; an adapted CST scheme that decouples only the ground state while preserving couplings between different higher-magnon sectors yields effective descriptions for all \(\lambda\) and confirms stable long-range order. The low-energy properties determined in this way match the literature values. However, in the Heisenberg limit, the adapted approach fails to capture high-energy features, such as the experimentally observed decay into the multi-particle continuum at corners of the Brillouin zone. A termination of the magnon-conserving flow equations at a finite flow parameter before the divergence reveals a single-magnon decay at high energies, which is connected to a crossing of a two-magnon bound state with the single-magnon mode. The observed energy dip qualitatively agrees with Quantum Monte Carlo results, but magnon–magnon interactions are overestimated, hindering a fully quantitative characterization of the single-magnon dispersion. Analyzing multi-magnon bound states over the anisotropy range unveils that the crossing of a three-magnon bound state with the single-magnon mode accounts for the breakdown of the magnon-conserving CST at higher $\lambda$. This work demonstrates that CST with scaling-dimension truncation provides a powerful framework for studying two-dimensional quantum magnets, capturing low-energy properties and bound states. Nevertheless, challenges remain in accurately describing high-energy features arising from a persistent overlap of magnon sectors due to strong binding effects.