The random antiferromagnetic spin-
1∕2 XX and XXZ chain is studied numerically for varying strength of the disorder, using exact diagonalization and stochastic series expansion methods. The spin-spin correlation function as well as the stiffness display a clear crossover from the pure behavior (no disorder) to the infinite randomness fixed point or random singlet behavior predicted by the real space renormalization group. The crossover length scale is shown to diverge as $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\sim}{\mathcal{D}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$, where
D is the variance of the random bonds. Our estimates for the exponent $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ agrees well within the error bars with the one for the localization length exponent emerging within an analytical bosonization calculation. Exact diagonalization and stochastic series expansion results for the string correlation function are also presented.
By using Lanczos exact diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo combined with stochastic analytic continuation, we study the dynamical properties of the S = 1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain with different strengths of bond disorder. In the weak disorder region, we find weakly coupled bonds which can induce additional low-energy excitation below the one-magnon mode. As the disorder increases, the average Haldane gap closes at δ Δ ∼ 0.5 with more and more low-energy excitations coming out. After the critical disorder strength δ c ∼ 1, the system reaches a random-singlet phase with prominent sharp peak at ω = 0 and broad continuum at ω > 0 of the dynamic spin structure factor. In addition, we analyze the distribution of random spin domains and numerically find three kinds of domains hosting effective spin-1/2 quanta or spin-1 sites in between. These “spins” can form the weakly coupled long-range singlets due to quantum fluctuation which contribute to the sharp peak at ω = 0.
We study dynamical properties at finite temperature
(T) of Heisenberg spin chains with random antiferromagnetic exchange couplings, which realize the random singlet phase in the low-energy limit, using three complementary numerical methods: exact diagonalization, matrix-product-state algorithms, and stochastic analytic continuation of quantum Monte Carlo results in imaginary time. Specifically, we investigate the dynamic spin structure factor $S(q,\ensuremath{\omega})$ and its $\ensuremath{\omega}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ limit, which are closely related to inelastic neutron scattering and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments (through the spin-lattice relaxation rate
1/T1). Our study reveals a continuous narrow band of low-energy excitations in $S(q,\ensuremath{\omega})$, extending throughout the
q space, instead of being restricted to $q\ensuremath{\approx}0$ and $q\ensuremath{\approx}\ensuremath{\pi}$ as found in the uniform system. Close to $q=\ensuremath{\pi}$, the scaling properties of these excitations are well captured by the random-singlet theory, but disagreements also exist with some aspects of the predicted
q dependence further away from $q=\ensuremath{\pi}$. Furthermore we also find spin diffusion effects close to
q=0 that are not contained within the random-singlet theory but give non-negligible contributions to the mean
1/T1. To compare with NMR experiments, we consider the distribution of the local relaxation rates
1/T1. We show that the local
1/T1 values are broadly distributed, approximately according to a stretched exponential. The mean
1/T1 first decreases with
T, but below a crossover temperature it starts to increase and likely diverges in the limit of a small nuclear resonance frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$. Although a similar divergent behavior has been predicted and experimentally observed for the static uniform susceptibility, this divergent behavior of the mean
1/T1 has never been experimentally observed. Indeed, we show that the divergence of the mean
1/T1 is due to rare events in the disordered chains and is concealed in experiments, where the typical
1/T1 value is accessed.
The low energy properties of the spin-1/2 random Heisenberg chain with ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions are studied by means of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and real space renormalization group (RSRG) method for finite chains. The results of the two methods are consistent with each other. The deviation of the gap distribution from that of the random singlet phase and the formation of the large-spin state is observed even for relatively small systems. For a small fraction of the ferromagnetic bond, the effect of the crossover to the random singlet phase on the low temperature susceptibility and specific heat is discussed. The crossover concentration of the ferromagnetic bond is estimated from the numerical data.
We present a new perturbative real space renormalization group (RG) to study random quantum spin chains and other one-dimensional disordered quantum systems. The method overcomes problems of the original approach which fails for quantum random chains with spins larger than S=1/2. Since it works even for weak disorder, we are able to obtain the zero temperature phase diagram of the random antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-1 chain as a function of disorder. We find a random singlet phase for strong disorder. As the disorder decreases, the system shows a crossover from a Griffiths to a disordered Haldane phase.
We formulate a real-space renormalization scheme that allows a study of the effects of bond randomness in the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain. There are four types of bonds that appear during the renormalization flow. We implement the decimation procedure numerically. We give a detailed study of the probability distributions of all these bonds in the phases that occur when the strength of the disorder is varied. Approximate flow equations are obtained in the weak-disorder regime as well as in the strong-disorder case, where the physics is that of the random-singlet phase.