Observation of two-magnon bound states in the two-leg ladders of (Ca,La)(14)Cu(24)O(41)

Quantum phase transitions in skewed ladder systems

In this brief review, we introduce a new spin ladder system called skewed spin ladders and discuss the exotic quantum phases of this system. The spin ladders studied are the 5/7, 3/4 and 3/5 systems corresponding to alternately fused 5 and 7 membered rings; 3 and 4 membered rings; and 3 and 5 membered rings. These ladders show completely different behaviour as the Hamiltonian model parameter is changed. When the Hamiltonian parameter is increased the 5/7 ladder switches from an initial singlet ground state to progressively higher spin ground state and then to a reentrant singlet state before finally settling to the highest spin ground state whose spin equals the number of unit cells in the system. The 3/4 ladder goes from a singlet ground state to a high spin ground state with each unit cell contributing spin 1 to the state, as the model parameter is increased. The 3/5 ladder shows a singlet ground state for small parameters and high spin ground state for intermediate values of the parameter and for still higher parameters, a reentrant singlet ground state. They can also show interesting magnetization plateaus as illustrated by studies on a specific spin ladder.

Momentum-resolved spin-conserving two-triplon bound state and continuum in a cuprate ladder

Studying multi-particle elementary excitations has provided unique access to understand collective many-body phenomena in correlated electronic materials, paving the way towards constructing microscopic models. In this work, we perform O K-edge resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) on the quasi-one-dimensional cuprate Sr 14 Cu 24 O 41 with weakly-doped spin ladders. The RIXS signal is dominated by a dispersing sharp mode ~ 270 meV on top of a damped incoherent component ~ 400-500 meV. Comparing with model calculations using the perturbative continuous unitary transformations method, the two components resemble the spin-conserving ΔS = 0 two-triplon bound state and continuum excitations in the spin ladders. Such multi-spin response with long-lived ΔS = 0 excitons is central to several exotic magnetic properties featuring Majorana fermions, yet remains unexplored given the generally weak cross-section with other experimental techniques. By investigating a simple spin-ladder model system, our study provides valuable insight into low-dimensional quantum magnetism.

Linked cluster expansions via hypergraph decompositions

We propose a hypergraph expansion which facilitates the direct treatment of quantum spin models with many-site interactions via perturbative linked cluster expansions. The main idea is to generate all relevant subclusters and sort them into equivalence classes essentially governed by hypergraph isomorphism. Concretely, a reduced König representation of the hypergraphs is used to make the equivalence relation accessible by graph isomorphism. During this procedure we determine the embedding factor for each equivalence class, which is used in the final resummation in order to obtain the final result. As an instructive example we calculate the ground-state energy and a particular excitation gap of the plaquette Ising model in a transverse field on the three-dimensional cubic lattice.

Dynamic control of heat flow using a spin-chain ladder cuprate film and an ionic liquid

Dynamic control of heat flow for applications in thermal management has attracted much interest in fields such as electronics and thermal engineering. Spin-chain ladder cuprates are promising materials to realize dynamic control of heat flow, since their magnon thermal conductivity is sensitive to the hole density in the spin ladders, which can be dynamically controlled by an external field. Here, we demonstrate the electric control of heat flow using a polycrystalline cuprate film and an ionic liquid. The results showed that a voltage application to the interface causes imperfectly recoverable decreases in both the thermal conductance of the film and the peak due to magnons in the Raman spectra. This result may be attributed to an increase in the hole density in the spin ladders. This report highlights that magnon thermal conduction has potential for the development of advanced thermal management applications.

Dynamic Structure Factor of Disordered Quantum Spin Ladders

We investigate the impact of quenched disorder on the zero-temperature dynamic structure factor of two-leg quantum spin ladders. Using linked-cluster expansions and bond-operator mean-field theory, huge effects on individual quasiparticles but also on composite bound states and two-quasiparticle continua are observed. This leads to intriguing quantum structures in dynamical correlation functions well observable in spectroscopic experiments.

Bound States and Field-Polarized Haldane Modes in a Quantum Spin Ladder

The challenge of one-dimensional systems is to understand their physics beyond the level of known elementary excitations. By high-resolution neutron spectroscopy in a quantum spin-ladder material, we probe the leading multiparticle excitation by characterizing the two-magnon bound state at zero field. By applying high magnetic fields, we create and select the singlet (longitudinal) and triplet (transverse) excitations of the fully spin-polarized ladder, which have not been observed previously and are close analogs of the modes anticipated in a polarized Haldane chain. Theoretical modeling of the dynamical response demonstrates our complete quantitative understanding of these states.

Phonon-magnon interaction in low dimensional quantum magnets observed by dynamic heat transport measurements

Thirty-five years ago, Sanders and Walton [Phys. Rev. B 15, 1489 (1977)] proposed a method to measure the phonon-magnon interaction in antiferromagnets through thermal transport which so far has not been verified experimentally. We show that a dynamical variant of this approach allows direct extraction of the phonon-magnon equilibration time, yielding 400 μs for the cuprate spin-ladder system Ca(9)La(5)Cu(24)O(41). The present work provides a general method to directly address the spin-phonon interaction by means of dynamical transport experiments.

Evidence for dimer crystal melting in the frustrated spin-ladder system BiCu2PO6

In the spin ladder compound BiCu(2)PO(6), there exists a decisive dynamics of spin excitations that we classify and characterize using inelastic light scattering. We observe an interladder singlet bound mode at 24  cm(-1) and two intraladder bound states at 62 and 108  cm(-1) in the leg (bb) and the rung (cc) polarization as well as a broad triplon continuum extending from 36  cm(-1) to 700  cm(-1). Though isolated spin ladder physics can roughly account for the observed excitations at high energies, frustration and interladder interactions need to be considered to fully describe the spectral distribution and scattering selection rules at low and intermediate energies. In addition, we attribute the rich spectrum of singlet bound modes to a melting of a dimer crystal. Our study provides evidence for a Z(2) quantum phase transition from a dimer to a resonating valence bond state driven by singlet fluctuations.

Field-controlled Luttinger liquid and possible crossover into spin liquid in strong-rail ladder systems

The thermodynamics and transport properties of strong-rail ladder systems are investigated by means of Green's function theory. It is shown that the magnetic behavior clearly manifests a typical antiferromagnetism with gapped or gapless low-lying excitations, which is in agreement with the experimental results. In addition, the temperature-field-induced phase diagram is explored, and we demonstrate a Luttinger liquid behavior in the window h(c) (marking the ending of the M=0 plateau)<h<h(s) (saturation magnetic field) within a narrow range of temperature. The spin liquid phase is uncovered for h<h(c) upon cooling down to zero temperature. It is also shown that the rung entanglement entropy is a good indicator for detecting the field-driven quantum criticality. Meanwhile, the magnetic susceptibility, the specific heat, and the thermal (spin) Drude weights are calculated to characterize the plentiful quantum phases, in which the thermal insulating and conducting behaviors can be controlled by magnetic fields.

Collective magnetic excitations in the spin ladder Sr14Cu24O41 measured using high-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

We investigate magnetic excitations in the spin-ladder compound Sr_{14}Cu_{24}O_{41} using high-resolution Cu L_{3} edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS). Our findings demonstrate that RIXS couples to two-triplon collective excitations. In contrast to inelastic neutron scattering, the RIXS cross section changes only moderately over the entire Brillouin zone, revealing high sensitivity also at small momentum transfers, allowing determination of the two-triplon energy gap as 100 +/- 30 meV. Our results are backed by calculations within an effective Hubbard model for a finite-size cluster, and confirm that optical selection rules are obeyed for excitations from this spherically symmetric quantum spin-liquid ground state.

One- and two-triplon spectra of a cuprate ladder

We have performed inelastic neutron scattering on the near ideal spin-ladder compound La4Sr10Cu24O41 as a starting point for investigating doped ladders and their tendency toward superconductivity. A key feature was the separation of one-triplon and two-triplon scattering. Two-triplon scattering is observed quantitatively for the first time and so access is realized to the important strong magnetic quantum fluctuations. The spin gap is found to be 26.4+/-0.3 meV. The data are successfully modeled using the continuous unitary transformation method, and the exchange constants are determined by fitting to be Jleg=186 meV and Jrung=124 meV along the leg and rung, respectively; a substantial cyclic exchange of Jcyc=31 meV is confirmed.

Excitations in one-dimensional S = 1/2 quantum antiferromagnets

The transition from dimerized to uniform phases is studied in terms of spectral weights for spin chains using continuous unitary transformations. The spectral weights in the S=1 channel are computed perturbatively around the limit of strong dimerization. We find that the spectral weight is concentrated mainly in the subspaces with a small number of elementary triplets (triplons), even for vanishing dimerization. So, besides spinons, triplons may be used as elementary excitations in spin chains. We conclude that there is no necessity to use fractional excitations in low-dimensional, undoped, or doped quantum antiferromagnets.

Anomalous thermal conductivity of frustrated heisenberg spin chains and ladders

We study the thermal transport properties of several quantum-spin chains and ladders. We find indications for a diverging thermal conductivity at finite temperatures for the models examined. The temperature at which the nondiverging prefactor kappa((th))(T) peaks is, in general, substantially lower than the temperature at which the corresponding specific heat c(V)(T) is maximal. We show that this result of the microscopic approach leads to a substantial reduction for estimates of the magnetic mean-free path lambda extracted by analyzing recent experiments, as compared to similar analyses by phenomenological theories.

Fractional and integer excitations in quantum antiferromagnetic spin 1/2 ladders

Spectral densities are computed in unprecedented detail for quantum antiferromagnetic spin 1/2 two-leg ladders. These results were obtained due to a major methodical advance achieved by optimally chosen unitary transformations. The approach is based on dressed integer excitations. Considerable weight is found at high energies in the two-particle sector. Precursors of fractional spinon physics occur supporting the conclusion that there is no necessity to resort to fractional excitations in order to describe features at higher energies.