arXiv:cond-mat/0608326 · Physical Review B
Excitations with fractional spin less than 12 in frustrated magnetoelastic chains
C. J. Gazza, A. Dobry, D. C. Cabra, T. Vekua
Abstract
We study the magnetic excitations on top of the plateaux states recently discovered in spin-Peierls systems in a magnetic field. We show by means of extensive density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) computations and an analytic approach that one single spin-flip on top of $M=1\ensuremath{-}\frac{2}{N}$ $(N=3,4,\dots{})$ plateau decays into $N$ elementary excitations each carrying a fraction $\frac{1}{N}$ of the spin. This fractionalization goes beyond the well-known decay of one magnon into two spinons taking place on top of the $M=0$ plateau. Concentrating on the $\frac{1}{3}$ plateau $(N=3)$ we unravel the microscopic structure of the domain walls which carry fractional spin-$\frac{1}{3}$, both from theory and numerics. These excitations are shown to be noninteracting and should be observable in x-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments.