We study a system with spin-Peierls dimerization in next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) interaction and also the presence of nearest-neighbor (NN) interaction under a magnetic field. We predict the existence of different fractionally quantized magnetization plateaus with many interesting physical properties. The effect of the frustrating NNN interaction and the role of quantum fluctuations are also explored for different magnetization plateaus. We explain more physically the gapless state of spin spectrum for small values of the frustrating NNN interaction. The transition from commensurate gapped phase to incommensurate Luttinger liquid phase is of Mott-δ type.
In the present work, we provide a comprehensive numerical investigation of the magnetic properties and phase spectra of three types of spin-1/2 branched chains consisting of one, two and three side spins per unit block with intra-chain interaction and a uniform inter-chain interaction in the presence of an external magnetic field. In a specific magnetic field interval, the low-temperature magnetization of these chains shows a step-like behavior with a pronounced plateau depending on the strength and the type of intra-chain interaction being ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic. We demonstrate that when inter-chain interaction J1 is antiferromagnetic and intra-chain interaction J2 is ferromagnetic, the magnetization of the models manifests a smooth increase without a plateau, which is evidence of the existence of a Luttinger-like spin liquid phase before reaching its saturation value. On the other hand, when J1 is ferromagnetic and J2 is antiferromagnetic, the low-temperature magnetization of the chain with two branches shows an intermediate plateau at one-half of the saturation magnetization that breaks a quantum spin liquid phase into two regions. The magnetization of the chain with three branches exhibits two intermediate plateaus and two regions of a quantum spin liquid. We demonstrate that the chains with more than one side spin illustrate in their ground-state phase diagram a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition from a gapful phase to a gapless spin liquid phase.
We study the one-dimensional spin-
21 Heisenberg model with antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor
J1 and next-nearest-neighbor
J2 exchange couplings in magnetic field
h. With varying dimensionless parameters
J2/J1 and
h/J1, the ground state of the model exhibits several phases including three gapped phases (dimer, 1/3-magnetization plateau, and fully polarized phases) and four types of gapless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) phases which we dub TLL1, TLL2, spin-density-wave
(SDW2), and vector chiral phases. From extensive numerical calculations using the density-matrix renormalization-group method, we investigate various (multiple-)spin-correlation functions in detail and determine dominant and subleading correlations in each phase. For the one-component TLLs, i.e., the TLL1,
SDW2, and vector chiral phases, we fit the numerically obtained correlation functions to those calculated from effective low-energy theories of TLLs and find good agreement between them. The low-energy theory for each critical TLL phase is thus identified, together with TLL parameters which control the exponents of power-law decaying correlation functions. For the TLL2 phase, we develop an effective low-energy theory of two-component TLL consisting of two free bosons (central charge
c=1+1), which explains numerical results of entanglement entropy and Friedel oscillations of local magnetization. Implications of our results to possible magnetic phase transitions in real quasi-one-dimensional compounds are also discussed.
We study the elementary excitations and magnetization of a one-dimensional spin-1/2 XX chain comprising trimer-dimer units (the J1-J1-J2-J3-J2 topology) under a transverse magnetic field h. Using Green's function theory and the Jordan-Wigner transformation, we map the system onto spinless fermions and focus on antiferromagnetic (AFM) interactions. At zero temperature, distinct 1/5 and 3/5 magnetization plateaus emerge, determined by the global periodicity Q=5, with the number of plateaus matching the number of excitation gaps above the Fermi level of the spinless fermions. The magnetic phase diagram in the (h-Js) plane features a Luttinger liquid (LL) state, a gapless AFM state, two magnetization plateau states, and a fully polarized gapped magnetic state. The widths of the LL and gapless AFM phases are found to be proportional to the bandwidths gamma = |E(k=0)-E(k=pi)| of the corresponding elementary excitations, whereas the widths of the magnetization plateau states are governed by the excitation gaps. Our study opens new directions for exploring interacting trimer-dimer spin chains in quantum magnetism using experimental techniques such as neutron scattering, as well as theoretical and numerical approaches including quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) and density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) methods. Furthermore, we extend the Oshikawa-Yamanaka-Affleck (OYA) condition to generalized cluster chains, demonstrating that the allowed magnetization plateaus are governed by the global periodicity of the chain (e.g., Q=5 for a trimer-dimer chain), rather than by the local periodicity of individual units (Q=3 for a trimer or Q=2 for a dimer).
The magnetization plateaus of frustrated Kondo necklace model have been studied with use of the bosonization technique and level spectroscopy method. It is shown that the model may show three phases (dimer plateau, Néel plateau and Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid phases) due to competitions among Ising anisotropy Δ, the nearest and next nearest neighbor exchange interactions J1, J2. It is shown from bosonization technique that quantum transition between the dimer and Néel plateaus is Gaussian type, while the transition from one of these plateau phases to Tomonaga-Luttinger phase is Brezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type. The phase diagram is constructed on the Δ-J2/J1 plane with use of level spectroscopy method, under the condition that the system has a half of the saturation magnetization.
A one-dimensional spin-1∕2 model in which the alternation of the exchange interactions between neighboring spins is accompanied by the next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) spin exchange (zig-zag spin ladder with alternation) is studied. The thermodynamic characteristics of the model quantum spin chain are obtained in the mean-field-like approximation. Depending on the strength of the NNN interactions, the model manifests either the spin-gapped behavior of low-lying excitations at low magnetic fields, or ferrimagnetic ordering in the ground state with gapless low-lying excitations. The system undergoes second-order or first-order quantum phase transitions, governed by the external magnetic field, NNN coupling strength, and the degree of the alternation. Hence, NNN spin–spin interactions in a dimerized quantum spin chain can produce a spontaneous magnetization. On the other hand, for quantum spin chains with a spontaneous magnetization, caused by NNN spin–spin couplings, the alternation of nearest-neighbor (NN) exchange interactions can cause destruction of that magnetization and the onset of a spin gap for low-lying excitations. Alternating NN interactions produce a spin gap between two branches of low-energy excitations, and the NNN interactions yield asymmetry of the dispersion laws of those excitations, with possible minima corresponding to incommensurate structures in the spin chain.