We investigate symmetry properties of the Bethe ansatz wave functions for the Heisenberg XXZ spin chain. The XXZ Hamiltonian commutes simultaneously with the shift operator T and the lattice inversion operator V in the space of Ω=±1 with Ω the eigenvalue of T. We show that the Bethe ansatz solutions with normalizable wave functions cannot be the eigenstates of T and V with quantum number (Ω, ϒ)=(±1, ∓1) where ϒ is the eigenvalue of V. Therefore, the Bethe ansatz wave functions should be singular for nondegenerate eigenstates of the Hamiltonian with quantum number (Ω, ϒ)=(±1, ∓1). It is also shown that such states exist in any nontrivial down-spin number sector and that the number of them diverges exponentially with the chain length.
We examine the question of whether Bethe's ansatz reproduces all states in the periodic Heisenberg XXZ and XXX spin chains. As was known to Bethe himself, there are states for which the Bethe momenta
kn diverge: these are in fact the simplest examples of ``string'' solutions. The coefficients of the Bethe wavefunction, too, diverge. When there are only two down spins in the system (the case considered by Bethe), we can renormalize these coefficients to get a sensible (and correct) wavefunction. We show that this is not always possible when there are more than two down spins. The Bethe equations have several such divergent solutions, and some of these correspond to genuine eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonian, but several do not. Nor do they reproduce the correct energy eigenvalues. Moreover, we point out that the algebraic Bethe ansatz, an alternative way to construct the wavefunctions proposed by Faddeev, Takhtajan et al., leads to vanishing wavefunctions for all these solutions. Thus, the Bethe ansatz solution of the Heisenberg model must be regarded as either incomplete, or inaccurate.