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arXiv:math-ph/0408020 · Physical Review Letters

Ferromagnetic Lieb-Mattis Theorem

Bruno Nachtergaele, Shannon L. Starr

Published Feb 11, 2005• 24 citations
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Abstract

We prove ferromagnetic ordering of energy levels for XXX Heisenberg chains with spins of arbitrary magnitude, thus extending our previous result for the spin-1/2 chain. Ferromagnetic ordering means that the minimum energies in the invariant subspaces of fixed total spin are monotone decreasing as a function of the total spin. This result provides a ferromagnetic analogue of the well-known theorem by Lieb and Mattis about ordering of energy levels in antiferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic systems on bipartite graphs.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.94.057206

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We prove ferromagnetic ordering of energy levels for XXX Heisenberg chains with spins of arbitrary magnitude, thus extending our previous result for the spin-1/2 chain. Ferromagnetic ordering means that the minimum energies in the invariant subspaces of fixed total spin are monotone decreasing as a function of the total spin. This result provides a ferromagnetic analogue of the well-known theorem by Lieb and Mattis about ordering of energy levels in antiferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic systems on bipartite graphs.
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The Heisenberg ferromagnet has symmetry group SU(2). The property known as ferromagnetic ordering of energy levels (FOEL) states that the minimum energy eigenvalue among eigenvectors with total spin s is monotone decreasing as a function of s. While this property holds for certain graphs such as open chains, in this note we demonstrate some counterexamples. We consider the spin 1/2 model on rings of length 2n for n = 2, 3, …, 8, and show that the minimum energy among all spin singlets is less than or equal to the minimum energy among all spin triplets, which violates FOEL. This also shows some counterexamples to the “Aldous ordering” for the symmetric exclusion process. We also review some of the literature related to these examples.
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The concept of ferrimagnetism was first proposed by Neel to explain why some materials have a macroscopic magnetization but no ferromagnetic long-range order, when the temperature T is lower than a phase transition temperature T c . In this article, based on a theorem of Lieb and Mattis, we show in a mathematically rigorous way that the global ground states of the generalized antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a bipartite lattice with unequal sublattice points have both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic long-range orders with the latter being predominant. Our rigorous results conform to Neel's theory.
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Ferromagnetic Ordering of Energy Levels for Uq(mathfraksl2)U_q(\\mathfrak{sl}_2)Uq​(mathfraksl2​) Symmetric Spin\n Chains
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