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Dynamical correlations of S=1/2 quantum spin chains

University of British Columbia

Spin-1/2 chains demonstrate some of the striking effects of interactions and quantum fluctuations in one-dimensional systems. The XXZ model has been used to study the unusual properties of anisotropic spin chains in an external magnetic field. The zero temperature phase diagram for this model exhibits a critical or quasi-long-range-ordered phase which is a realization of a Luttinger liquid. While many static properties of spin-1/2 chains have been explained by combinations of analytical techniques such as bosonization and Bethe ansatz, the standard approach fails in the calculation of some time-dependent correlation functions. I present a study of the longitudinal dynamical structure factor for the XXZ model in the critical regime. I show that an approximation for the line shape of the dynamical structure factor in the limit of small momentum transfer can be obtained by going beyond the Luttinger model and treating irrelevant operators associated with band curvature effects. This approach is able to describe the width of the on-shell peak and the high-frequency tail at finite magnetic field. Integrability is shown to affect the low-energy effective model at zero field, with consequences for the line shape. The power-law singularities at the thresholds of the particle-hole continuum are investigated using an analogy with the X-ray edge problem. Using methods of Bethe ansatz and conformal field theory, I compute the exact exponents for the edge singularities of the dynamical structure factor. The same methods are used to study the long-time asymptotic behavior of the spin self-correlation function, which is shown to be dominated by a high-energy excitation.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2008-06-24

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/939

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/