Motivated by recent work on Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin systems on various lattices made up of triangles, we examine the low-energy properties of a chain of antiferromagnetically coupled triangles of half-odd-integer spins. We derive the low-energy effective Hamiltonian to second order in the ratio of the coupling
J2 between triangles to the coupling
J1 within each triangle. The effective Hamiltonian contains four states for each triangle which are given by the products of spin-1/2 states with the states of a pseudospin 1/2. We compare the results obtained by exact diagonalization of the effective Hamiltonian with those obtained for the full Hamiltonian using exact diagonalization and the density-matrix renormalization group method. It is found that the effective Hamiltonian gives an accurate value for the ground-state energy only if the ratio
J2/J1 is less than about 0.2 and that too for the spin-1/2 case with linear topology. The chain of spin-1/2 triangles shows interesting properties like spontaneous dimerization and several singlet and triplet low-energy (possibly gapless) states which lie close to the ground state. We have also studied the spin-3/2 case and find the low-energy effective Hamiltonians (LEH's) to be less accurate there than in the spin-1/2 case. Finally, we have studied nonlinear topologies where the LEH results deviate further from the exact results.
We study the low-energy dynamics of
S=1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg clusters constructed by diluting a square lattice at vacancy concentration
p at and below the percolation threshold ${p}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}\ensuremath{\approx}0.407$. The finite-size scaling behavior of the average excitation gap, $⟨\ensuremath{\Delta}⟩\ensuremath{\sim}{L}^{\ensuremath{-}z}$, where
L is the cluster length, is obtained using quantum Monte Carlo results for an upper bound ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ to $\ensuremath{\Delta}$, derived from sum rules. At the percolation threshold, we obtain a dynamic exponent $z=3.6\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.1\ensuremath{\approx}2{D}_{f}$ for clusters with singlet
(S=0) ground state. Here
Df=91/48 is the fractal dimensionality of the percolating cluster. We argue that this large dynamic exponent---roughly twice that expected for quantum-rotor excitations---is a consequence of weakly interacting localized effective magnetic moments, which form due to local sublattice imbalance. This picture is supported by an extremal-value analysis of local spectral gaps, which delivers an exponent relation (between
z and two exponents characterizing the local-gap distribution) reproduced by our simulation data. However, the average $⟨{\ensuremath{\Delta}}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}⟩$ over all clusters, which have mostly ground-state spin
S>0, scales with a smaller exponent than for the
S=0 clusters alone; $z\ensuremath{\approx}1.5{D}_{f}$. Lanczos exact diagonalization for small clusters show that typically, $S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}S\ensuremath{-}1$ in the lowest-energy excitations while the dominant spectral weight originates from $S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}S+1$ excitations. Thus, the scaling of $⟨{\ensuremath{\Delta}}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}⟩$ for clusters with ground state
S>0 does not reflect the lowest-energy excitations but the higher $S\ensuremath{\rightarrow}S+1$ excitations. This result can be understood within a valence bond picture. To further explore the scenario of localized moments, we introduce a classical dimer-monomer aggregation model to study the distribution of nearest-neighbor sites forming dimers (which are the objects used in mapping to the quantum-rotor model) and unpaired spins (monomers). The monomers are localized and, thus, effective magnetic moments should form in the spin system. We also study the lowest triplet excitation of
S=0 clusters using quantum Monte Carlo calculations in the valence bond basis. The triplet is concentrated at some of the classical monomer regions, confirming the mechanism of moment formation. The number of spins (and moment regions) affected by the excitation scales as a nontrivial power of the cluster size. For a dimer-diluted bilayer Heisenberg model with weak interlayer coupling (where the system remains N\'eel ordered), there is no sublattice imbalance. In this case we find $z\ensuremath{\approx}{D}_{f}$, consistent with quantum-rotor excitations. For a single layer at $p<{p}^{\ensuremath{\ast}}$ we find $z\ensuremath{\approx}2=D$, which indicates that the weakly interacting localized moment mechanism is valid only exactly at the percolation point. There is a crossover behavior close to the percolation point.
We investigate the quantum dynamics of the spins on different Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin lattice systems. Firstly, we applied the coupled-cluster method to the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic \emph{XXZ} model on a square lattice by employing an approximation which contains two-body long-range correlations and high-order four-body local correlations. Improvement is found for the ground-state energy, sublattice magnetization, and the critical anisotropy when comparing with the approximation including the two-body correlations alone. We also obtain the full excitation spectrum which is in good agreement with the quantum Monte Carlo results and the high-order spin-wave theory.Secondly, we study the longitudinal excitations of quantum antiferromagnets on a triangular lattice by a recently proposed microscopic many-body approach based on magnon-density waves. We calculate the full longitudinal excitation spectra of the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model for a general spin quantum number in the isotropic limit. Similar to the square lattice model, we find that, at the center of the first hexagonal Brillouin zone
Γ(q=0) and at the magnetic ordering wavevectors
±[Q=(4π/3,0)], the excitation spectra become gapless in the thermodynamic limit, due to the slow, logarithmic divergence of the structure factor. However, these longitudinal modes on two-dimensional models may be considered as quasi-gapped, as any finite-size effect or small anisotropy will induce a large energy gap, when compared with the counterpart of the transverse spin-wave excitations. We have also investigated the excited states of the quasi-one-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets on hexagonal lattices, including the longitudinal modes based on the magnon-density waves. A model Hamiltonian with a uniaxial single-ion anisotropy is first studied by a spin-wave theory based on the one-boson method; the ground state thus obtained is employed for the study of the longitudinal modes. The full energy spectra of both the transverse modes (i.e., magnons) and the longitudinal modes are obtained as functions of the nearest-neighbor coupling and the anisotropy constants. We have found two longitudinal modes due to the non-collinear nature of the triangular antiferromagnetic order, similar to that of the phenomenological field theory approach by Affleck. The excitation energy gaps due to the anisotropy and the energy gaps of the longitudinal modes without anisotropy are then investigated. We then compares our results for the longitudinal energy gaps at the magnetic wavevectors with the experimental results for several antiferromagnetic compounds with both integer and non-integer spin quantum numbers, and we find good agreements after the higher-order contributions are included in our calculations.
We study the zero-temperature phase diagram and the low-lying excitations of a square-lattice spin-half Heisenberg antiferromagnet with two types of regularly distributed nearest-neighbor exchange bonds
[J>0 (antiferromagnetic) and $\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\infty}<{J}^{\ensuremath{'}}<\ensuremath{\infty}]$ using the coupled cluster method (CCM) for high orders of approximation (up to LSUB8). We use a N\'eel model state as well as a helical model state as a starting point for the CCM calculations. We find a second-order transition from a phase with N\'eel order to a finite-gap quantum disordered phase for sufficiently large antiferromagnetic exchange constants ${J}^{\ensuremath{'}}>0.$ For frustrating ferromagnetic couplings ${J}^{\ensuremath{'}}<0$ we find indications that quantum fluctuations favor a first-order phase transition from the N\'eel order to a quantum helical state, by contrast with the corresponding second-order transition in the corresponding classical model. The results are compared to those of exact diagonalizations of finite systems (up to 32 sites) and those of spin-wave and variational calculations. The CCM results agree well with the exact diagonalization data over the whole range of the parameters. The special case of ${J}^{\ensuremath{'}}=0,$ which is equivalent to the honeycomb lattice, is treated more closely.
To understand the role of local sublattice imbalance in low-energy spectra of
s=21 quantum antiferromagnets, we study the
s=21 quantum nearest neighbor Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the coordination 3 Cayley tree. We perform many-body calculations using an implementation of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique for generic tree graphs. We discover that the bond-centered Cayley tree has a quasidegenerate set of a low-lying tower of states and an ``anomalous'' singlet-triplet finite-size gap scaling. For understanding the construction of the first excited state from the many-body ground state, we consider a wave function ansatz given by the single-mode approximation, which yields a high overlap with the DMRG wave function. Observing the ground-state entanglement spectrum leads us to a picture of the low-energy degrees of freedom being ``giant spins'' arising out of sublattice imbalance, which helps us analytically understand the scaling of the finite-size spin gap. The Schwinger-boson mean-field theory has been generalized to nonuniform lattices, and ground states have been found which are spatially inhomogeneous in the mean-field parameters.