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arXiv:cond-mat/0201300 · Physical Review Letters

Anomalous Thermal Conductivity of Frustrated Heisenberg Spin Chains and Ladders

Jose Vicente Alvarez, Claudius Gros

Published Sep 23, 2002• 58 citations
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Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.89.156603

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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.

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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.
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 non-diverging 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.
We study the spin and thermal conductivity of spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ ladders and chains at finite temperature, relevant for experiments with quantum magnets. Using a state-of-the-art density matrix renormalization group algorithm, we compute the current autocorrelation functions on the real-time axis and then carry out a Fourier integral to extract the frequency dependence of the corresponding conductivities. The finite-time error is analyzed carefully. We first investigate the limiting case of spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ XXZXXZXXZ chains, for which our analysis suggests nonzero dc conductivities in all interacting cases irrespective of the presence or absence of spin Drude weights. For ladders, we observe that all models studied are normal conductors with no ballistic contribution. Nonetheless, only the high-temperature spin conductivity of XXXXXX ladders has a simple diffusive, Drude-like form, while Heisenberg ladders exhibit a more complicated low-frequency behavior. We compute the dc spin conductivity down to temperatures of the order of $T\ensuremath{\sim}0.5J$, where JJJ is the exchange coupling along the legs of the ladder. We further extract mean-free paths and discuss our results in relation to thermal conductivity measurements on quantum magnets.
Based on numerical simulations, a study of the high temperature, finite frequency, thermal conductivity kappa(omega) of spin-1/2 ladders is presented. The exact diagonalization and a novel Lanczos technique are employed. The conductivity spectra, analyzed as a function of rung coupling, point to a nondiverging dc limit but to an unconventional low frequency behavior. The results are discussed in perspective with recent experiments indicating a significant magnetic contribution to the energy transport in quasi-one-dimensional compounds.
The anomalous thermal conductivity in spin chains observed in experiments is studied for the low-temperature regime. In the effective dynamics with most realistic perturbations, the so-called umklapp terms are irrelevant to reduce the mean free path in the energy transport at even finite temperatures. This is consistent with the large conductivities found in recent experiments. The Drude weight which is the prefactor in the divergent conductivity is calculated, and the temperature dependence is discussed.
We analyze the thermal conductivity of anisotropic and frustrated spin-1/2 chains using analytical and numerical techniques. This includes mean-field theory based on the Jordan-Wigner transformation, bosonization, and exact diagonalization of systems with N< 18N<~18N< 18 sites. We present results for the temperature dependence of the zero-frequency weight of the conductivity for several values of the anisotropy \ensuremath{\Delta}. In the gapless regime, we show that the mean-field theory compares well to known results and that the low-temperature limit is correctly described by bosonization. In the antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic gapped regime, we analyze the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity numerically. The convergence of the finite-size data is remarkably good in the ferromagnetic case. Finally, we apply our numerical method and mean-field theory to the frustrated chain where we find a good agreement of these two approaches on finite systems. Our numerical data do not yield evidence for a diverging thermal conductivity in the thermodynamic limit in case of the antiferromagnetic gapped regime of the frustrated chain.