Disordered Quantum Spin Chains with Long-Range Antiferromagnetic Interactions

TL;DR

This paper studies quantum spin chains with long-range antiferromagnetic interactions, revealing a phase transition in magnetic susceptibility and excitation localization as the decay exponent varies.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of susceptibility and localization transitions in long-range disordered quantum spin chains using strong disorder renormalization.

Findings

Identifies a crossover at α* ≈ 1.066 between divergent and vanishing low-temperature susceptibility phases.

Finds that finite cutoff lengths shift the crossover point to smaller α* values.

Discovers a delocalization transition coinciding with a pseudo-gap opening at α_c = α*.

Abstract

We investigate the magnetic susceptibility $\chi(T)$ of quantum spin chains of $N=1280$ spins with power-law long-range antiferromagnetic coupling as a function of their spatial decay exponent $\alpha$ and cutoff length $\xi$. The calculations are based on the strong disorder renormalization method which is used to obtain the temperature dependence of $\chi(T)$ and distribution functions of couplings at each renormalization step. For the case with only algebraic decay ($ \xi = \infty$) we find a crossover at $\alpha^*=1.066$ between a phase with a divergent low-temperature susceptibility $\chi(T\rightarrow 0) $ for $\alpha > \alpha^*$ to a phase with a vanishing $\chi(T\rightarrow 0) $ for $\alpha < \alpha^*$. For finite cutoff lengths $\xi$, this crossover occurs at a smaller $\alpha^*(\xi)$. Additionally we study the localization of spin excitations for $ \xi = \infty$ by evaluating the distribution function of excitation energies and we find a delocalization transition that coincides with the opening of the pseudo-gap at $\alpha_c=\alpha^*$.