We discuss the effects of nonmagnetic impurities (static holes) in the
S=1/2 Heisenberg model on a two-dimensional (2D) square lattice, and on two- and three-leg ladders. Results of quantum Monte Carlo simulations show that a free localized moment is induced around an isolated impurity only in the spin-gapped two-leg ladder, in agreement with previous theoretical expectations. The localization length of the
S=1/2 impurity moment in a two-leg ladder with isotropic couplings is $\ensuremath{\approx}1.5$ lattice spacings. In gapless ladders (odd number of legs) and in the 2D lattice, no free moments are induced. However, in the 2D system, which has antiferromagnetic long-range order at
T=0 and a gap for longitudinal fluctuations, the impurity leads to a localized distortion of the magnetization in the direction of the broken symmetry, with total
Sz=1/2. The shape of the distortion is in close agreement with previous spin-wave calculations. For all the systems, a staggered moment is induced by the impurity. For the gapped two-leg ladder this is exponentially localized within a length equal to the spin correlation length of the ladder ($\ensuremath{\approx}3.2$ lattice spacings). For the three-leg ladder, the integrated staggered moment diverges as the system size goes to infinity, but the staggered magnetization at a given site appears to vanish. In 2D, we discuss the behavior seen in finite systems both with and without additional symmetry-breaking mechanisms. We also discuss the effect of impurities on the NMR Knight shift and the bulk magnetic susceptibility.
Effects of nonmagnetic impurity doping on an AF spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladder system are studied by the QMC method. A single nonmagnetic impurity induces a localized spin-1/2 moment accompanied by "static" and enhanced AF correlations around it. Small and finite concentration of impurities induces a remarkable change of magnetic and thermodynamic properties with gapless excitations. It also shows rather sharp but continuous crossover around the concentration of about 4%. Above the crossover concentration, all the spins are strongly coupled participating in the enhanced and rather uniform power-law decay of the antiferromagnetic correlation. Below the crossover, each impurity forms an antiferromagnetic cluster only weakly coupled each other. For random distribution of impurities, large Curie-like susceptibility accompanied with small residual entropy is obtained at low temperatures in agreement with recent experimental observation in Zn-doped
SrCu2O3. Temperature dependence of AF susceptibility shows power-law-like but weaker divergence than the single chain AFH in the temperature range studied.
Low-temperature thermodynamic properties of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladder system with non-magnetic impurities are discussed using an effective Hamiltonian for the impurity-induced spins in the background of a spin liquid with a gap. It is shown that the uniform susceptibility shows Curie-like behavior in high-, intermediate-, and low-temperature regimes, with three different Curie constants. The ratio of specific heat to temperature, C/T, is divergent in the low-temperature limit, reflecting a singular distribution of the effective couplings among the impurity spins.
Magnetic correlations are studied in a two-leg Hubbard ladder doped with nonmagnetic impurities using finite temperature quantum Monte Carlo (FTQMC) method. A number of relevant macroscopic quantities calculated as a function of temperature T and impurity concentration are found to exhibit significantly renormalized behavior, a feature noted in many experiments. The uniform magnetic susceptibility χ0(T) for the impurity doped system shows a cusplike behavior followed by a sharp increase at lower temperatures, signaling the formation of impurity induced free magnetic moments, while it diminishes rapidly for the pure system. The spin correlations are found to increase in the vicinity of an impurity. To investigate the effect of nonmagnetic impurities on the spin wave modes in the system, spin wave velocity vsw is calculated as a function of impurity concentration. The result shows that vsw is reduced by nonmagnetic impurities, indicating softening of the modes. Simulations are performed slightly away from half filling and kinetic energy of the electrons in the neighborhood of an impurity site is calculated to study the interplay between impurities and holes. However, contrary to previous experimental observations on two dimensional lattices where nonmagnetic impurities reduce hole mobility, no noticeable effect of impurity on the mobility of the neighboring electrons is found in our calculation.
We solve the problem of
N nonmagnetic impurities in the staggered flux phase of the Heisenberg model which we assume to be a good mean-field approximation for the spin-gap phase of the cuprates. The density of states is evaluated exactly in the unitary scattering limit and is proportional to $1/\ensuremath{\omega}{ln}^{2}(|\ensuremath{\omega}|/D)$, in analogy with the 1D case of doped spin-Peierls and two-leg ladder compounds. We argue that the system exhibits a quasi-long-range order at
T=0 with instantaneous spin-spin correlations decreasing as
ni/ln2(niRij) for large distances
Rij and we predict enhanced low energy fluctuations in neutron scattering.