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arXiv:cond-mat/9811115 · Physical Review Letters

Exact Thermodynamics of Disordered Impurities in Quantum Spin Chains

Andreas Klümper, Andrei A. Zvyagin

Published Nov 30, 1998• 22 citations
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Abstract

Exact results for the thermodynamic properties of ensembles of magnetic impurities with randomly distributed host-impurity couplings in the quantum antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model are presented. Exact calculations are done for arbitrary values of temperature and external magnetic field. We have shown that for strong disorder the quenching of the impurity moments is absent. For weak disorder the screening persists, but with the critical non-Fermi-liquid behaviors of the magnetic susceptibility and specific heat. A comparison with disordered Kondo effect experiments in dirty metallic alloys is performed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.81.4975

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Exact results for the thermodynamic properties of ensembles of magnetic impurities with randomly distributed host-impurity couplings in the quantum antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model are presented. Exact calculations are done for arbitrary values of temperature and external magnetic field. We have shown that for strong disorder the quenching of the impurity moments is absent. For weak disorder the screening persists, but with the critical non-Fermi-liquid behaviors of the magnetic susceptibility and specific heat. A comparison with disordered Kondo effect experiments in dirty metallic alloys is performed.
We calculate exactly the thermodynamics of ensembles of magnetic impurities with randomly distributed host-impurity couplings in the critical region of the uniaxial spin-1/2 quantum chain. We derive a finite set of integral equations describing the complete temperature and magnetic field dependence of the system. Exact numerical results for arbitrary values of temperature and external magnetic field are obtained. We show that for strong disorder the quenching of the impurity moments is absent. For weak disorder the screening persists, but with a critical non-Fermi-liquid behaviour of the magnetic susceptibility and specific heat. We point out that the `easy-plane' magnetic anisotropy does not qualitatively change the behaviour of the thermodynamic characteristics of the disordered impurities in the antiferromagnetic chain. On the other hand, anisotropy of ferromagnetic type can enhance the tendency to quenching of the impurities for strong disorder.
In this work we consider several exactly solvable models of magnetic impurities in critical quantum antiferromagnetic spin chains and multichannel Kondo impurities. Their ground-state properties are studied, and the finite set of nonlinear integral equations which exactly describe the thermodynamics of the models is constructed. We obtain several analytical low-energy expressions for the temperature, magnetic field, and frequency dependences of important characteristics of exactly solvable disordered quantum spin models and disordered multichannel Kondo impurities with essential many-body interactions. We show that the only low-energy parameter that gets renormalized is the velocity of the low-lying excitations (or the effective crossover scale connected with each impurity); the others appear to be universal. In our study several kinds of strong disorder important for experiments were used. Some of them produce low divergences in certain characteristics of our strongly disordered critical systems (compared with finite values for the homogeneous case or a single impurity). For weak disorder, or for narrow distributions of the local Kondo temperatures, our exact results reveal the presence of Kondo screening of disordered ensembles of magnetic impurities by low-lying excitations of the host. We point out that our results qualitatively coincide with the data of experiments on real disordered quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnetic systems and with the similar behavior of some heavy metallic alloys.
In the framework of the exactly solvable model, using nonperturbative methods, the temperature and magnetic field behavior of the NMR relaxation rate (and low-energy dynamical structure factor) for the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain with magnetic impurities is calculated. For a single magnetic impurity, totally screened at low temperatures by spinons of the chain, the critical exponents, which determine the low-temperature and magnetic field behavior, get renormalized. For the finite concentration of impurities with the random distribution of the impurity-chain coupling the weak disorder in the distribution does not produce essential changes to the dynamical structure factor. Contrary, the strong disorder yields drastically different behavior of the low-energy dynamical characteristics, comparing to the homogeneous chain. Our results are generic, and they qualitatively agree in limiting cases with the results of perturbative calculations for disordered spin chains and with the data of experiments on quasi-one-dimensional spin compounds.
We present an exact theory that describes how magnetic impurities change the behavior of the thermal conductivity for the integrable Heisenberg antiferromagnetic quantum spin-1/2 chain. Single magnetic impurities and a large concentration of impurities with similar values of the couplings to the host chain (a weak disorder) do not change the linear-in-temperature low-T behavior of the thermal conductivity: Only the slope of that behavior becomes smaller, compared to the homogeneous case. The strong disorder in the distribution of the impurity-host couplings produces more rapid temperature growth of the thermal conductivity, compared to the linear-in-T dependence of the homogeneous chain and the chain with weak disorder. Recent experiments on the thermal conductivity in inhomogeneous quasi-one-dimensional quantum spin systems manifest qualitative agreement with our results.
We propose an integrable model of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain coupled to two impurity moments. With the open boundary conditions at the impurity sites, the model can be exactly solved for arbitrary impurity spin and arbitrary exchange constants between the bulk and the impurities. The absence of redundant terms in the Hamiltonian makes the model very reasonable. The Hamiltonian is diagonalized via algebraic Bethe ansatz. It is found that the impurity spins can only be screened (partially for S>1/2S>1/2S>1/2) for antiferromagnetic coupling between the impurity and the bulk. Otherwise the impurity spins cannot be screened. The residual entropy of the ground state and the Kondo temperature are also derived explicitly based on the Bethe ansatz and the local Fermi-liquid theory.
By making use of the Lanczos and the density-matrix renormalization-group methods, we study the zero-temperature properties of a spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain system with a spin-1/2 magnetic impurity symmetrically coupled to its two nearest-neighbor spins. A comparison is made with the results for a magnetic impurity coupled only to the nearest-neighbor spin in the chain. The binding energy and the spin correlations are calculated. The matrix elements of the impurity spin operators are also calculated between several low-energy states. By carefully analyzing finite-size effects, we show that the dynamical structure factor of the impurity contains a \ensuremath{\delta}-function contribution at zero frequency which does not vanish in the thermodynamic limit for the case of symmetrical coupling. This indicates a partial decoupling of the impurity spin from the spins in the chain, and therefore the impurity susceptibility is predicted to show a Curie behavior. This contradicts the two-channel Kondo behavior suggested from analytic considerations.