arXiv:cond-mat/9809094 · Physical Review Letters
Elementary Excitations of the Symmetric Spin-Orbital Model: The XY Limit
Frédéric Mila, Beat Frischmuth, Andreas Deppeler, Matthias Troyer
Abstract
The elementary excitations of the 1D, symmetric, spin-orbital model are studied in two anisotropic cases: the pure $\mathrm{XY}$ and the dimerized $\mathrm{XXZ}$ models. While they preserve the symmetry between spin and orbital degrees of freedom, these models allow for a picture of the low-lying excitations. In the pure $\mathrm{XY}$ case, a phase separation takes place between two phases with free-fermion-like gapless excitations. In the dimerized case the low-energy effective Hamiltonian reduces to the 1D Ising model with gapped excitations. All the elementary excitations involve simultaneous flips of the spin and orbital degrees of freedom: a clear indication of the breakdown of the traditional mean-field theory.