1998/07/18 by D. Augier, P. Hansen, Augier, D. +7
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/9807265
10 pages, Revtex, 14 figures embedded in the text
arxiv created 1998/07/18 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
The role of the spin-phonon coupling in spin-Peierls chains doped with spin-0 or spin-1 impurities is investigated by various numerical methods such as exact diagonalization, quantum Monte Carlo simulations and Density Matrix Renormalization Group. Various treatments of the lattice, in a fully quantum mechanical way, classically in the adiabatic approximation or using a fixed three-dimensional dimerization pattern are compared. For an isolated chain, strong bonds form between the two spin-1/2 sites next to the impurity site, leading to the appearance of magneto-elastic solitons. We also show that these excitations do not bind to spin-0 impurities but are weakly attracted by spin-1 impurities. However, the interchain elastic coupling generates an effective confining potential at the non-magnetic impurity site which can lead to the formation of soliton-impurity bound states. We also predict that a soliton and an antisoliton bound to two impurities on the same chain can annihilate each other when the separation between the impurities is smaller than a critical value depending on the interchain elastic constant.