We study spin dynamics of a spin-Peierls chain with nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor Heisenberg spin exchange interactions together with a gapped and dispersionless phonon. The dynamical spin correlation function and phonon excitation spectrum are calculated at zero temperature by using dynamical density-matrix renormalization-group method. We find a new spin excitation assisted by non-softening phonon. The excitation is located above phonon in energy and shows a dispersive feature with strong intensity near the momentum
π. The phonon excitation spectrum is also influenced by the spin-phonon interaction. We discuss the possibility of observing the spin-phonon coupled features in inorganic spin-Peierls compound CuGeO
3.
The spin-Peierls transition at
TSP of spin-
21 chains with isotropic exchange interactions has previously been modeled as correlated for
T>TSP and mean field for
T<TSP. We use correlated states throughout in the ${J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}$ model with antiferromagnetic exchange
J1 and ${J}_{2}=\ensuremath{\alpha}{J}_{1}$ between first and second neighbors, respectively, and variable frustration $0\ensuremath{\le}\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\le}0.50$. The thermodynamic limit is reached at high
T by exact diagonalization of short chains and at low
T by density matrix renormalization group calculations of progressively longer chains. In contrast to mean field results, correlated states of 1D models with linear spin-phonon coupling and a harmonic adiabatic lattice provide an internally consistent description in which the parameter
TSP yields both the stiffness and the lattice dimerization $\ensuremath{\delta}(T)$. The relation between
TSP and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}(\ensuremath{\delta},\ensuremath{\alpha})$, the
T=0 gap induced by dimerization, depends strongly on $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and deviates from the BCS gap relation that holds in uncorrelated spin chains. Correlated states account quantitatively for the magnetic susceptibility of TTF-
CuS4C4(CF3)4 crystals (
J1=79K, $\ensuremath{\alpha}=0$,
TSP=12K) and
CuGeO3 crystals (
J1=160K, $\ensuremath{\alpha}=0.35$,
TSP=14K). The same parameters describe the specific heat anomaly of
CuGeO3 and inelastic neutron scattering. Modeling the spin-Peierls transition with correlated states exploits the fact that $\ensuremath{\delta}(0)$ limits the range of spin correlations at
T=0 while
T>0 limits the range at $\ensuremath{\delta}=0$.
Summary: The interplay of charge, spin and lattice degrees of freedom is studied for quasi-one-dimensional electron and spin systems coupled to quantum phonons. Special emphasis is put on the influence of the lattice dynamics on the Peierls transition. Using exact diagonalization techniques the ground-state and spectral properties of the Holstein model of spinless fermions and of a frustrated Heisenberg model with magneto-elastic coupling are analyzed on finite chains. In the non-adiabatic regime a (T = 0) quantum phase transition from a gapless Luttinger-liquid/spin-fluid state to a gapped dimerized phase occurs at a nonzero critical value of the electron/spin-phonon interaction. To study the nature of the spin-Peierls transition at finite temperatures for the infinite system, an alternative Green’s function approach is applied to the magnetostrictive XY model. With increasing phonon frequency the structure factor shows a remarkable crossover from soft-mode to central-peak behaviour. The results are discussed in relation to recent experiments on CuGeO3. 1
The zero and finite temperature spin-Peierls transitions in a quasi-one-dimensional spin-
21 Heisenberg model coupled to adiabatic bond phonons is investigated using the stochastic series expansion (SSE) quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method. The quantum phase transition from a gapless N\'eel state to a spin-gapped Peierls state is studied in the parameter space spanned by spatial anisotropy, interchain coupling strength, and spin-lattice coupling strength. It is found that for any finite interchain coupling, the transition to a dimerized Peierls ground state only occurs when the spin-lattice coupling exceeds a finite, nonzero critical value. This is in contrast to the pure 1D model (zero interchain coupling), where adiabatic/classical phonons lead to a dimerized ground state for any nonzero spin-phonon interaction. The phase diagram in the parameter space shows that for a strong interchain coupling, the relation between the interchain coupling and the critical value of the spin-phonon interaction is linear whereas for weak interchain coupling, this behavior is found to have a natural logarithmlike relation. No region was found to have a long range magnetic order and dimerization occurring simultaneously. Instead, the N\'eel state order vanishes simultaneously with the setting in of the spin-Peierls state. For the thermal phase transition, a continuous heat capacity with a peak at the critical temperature
Tc shows a second order phase transition. The variation of the equilibrium bond length distortion ${\ensuremath{\delta}}_{eq}$ with temperature showed a power law relation which decayed to zero as the temperature was increased to
Tc, indicating a continuous transition from the dimerized phase to a paramagnetic phase with uniform bond length and zero antiferromagnetic susceptibility.
The density-matrix renormalization-group method is used to investigate the spin-Peierls transition for Heisenberg spins coupled to quantized phonons. We use a phonon spectrum that interpolates between a gapped, dispersionless (Einstein) limit to a gapless, dispersive (Debye) limit. A variety of theoretical probes are used to determine the quantum phase transition, including energy gap crossing, a finite-size scaling analysis, bond-order autocorrelation functions, and bipartite quantum entanglement. All these probes indicate that in the antiadiabatic phonon limit a quantum phase transition of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type is observed at a nonzero spin-phonon coupling,
gc. An extrapolation from the Einstein limit to the Debye limit is accompanied by an increase in
gc for a fixed optical $(q=\ensuremath{\pi})$ phonon gap. We therefore conclude that the dimerized ground state is more unstable with respect to Debye phonons with the introduction of phonon-dispersion renormalizing the effective spin-lattice coupling for the Peierls-active mode. We also show that the staggered spin-spin and phonon displacement order parameters are unreliable means of determining the transition.
We performed a finite-temperature quantum Monte Carlo simulation of the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg model with nearest-neighbor interaction coupled to Einstein phonons. Our method allows to treat easily up to 100 phonons per site and the results presented are practically free from truncation errors. We studied in detail the magnetic susceptibility, the specific heat, the phonon occupation, the dimerization, and the spin-correlation function for various spin-phonon couplings and phonon frequencies. In particular we give evidence for the transition from a gapless to a massive phase by studying the finite-size behavior of the susceptibility. We also show that the dimerization is proportional to g2/Ω for T<2J.