Frustrated impurity spins in ordered two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamical behavior of frustrated impurity spins with various magnitudes in ordered 2D quantum antiferromagnets, extending previous work beyond spin-wave approximation and revealing new spectral and susceptibility features.

Contribution

It advances understanding of impurity spin dynamics by going beyond spin-wave approximation and analyzing impurities with spins $S extgreater=1/2$, uncovering new spectral and susceptibility phenomena.

Findings

Spectral function gains new $oldsymbol{ extomega^2}$ and $oldsymbol{ extomega T^2}$ terms.

Impurity susceptibility retains Lorenz peak structure with increased width.

Transverse static susceptibility shows a negative logarithmic contribution.

Abstract

Dynamical properties of an impurity spin coupled symmetrically to sublattices of ordered 2D Heisenberg quantum antiferromagnet (i.e., frustrated impurity spin) are discussed at $T\ge0$ (existence of a small interaction stabilizing the long range order at $T\ne0$ is implied). We continue our study on this subject started in Phys.Rev.B 72, 174419 (2005), where spin-1/2 defect is discussed and the host spins fluctuations are considered within the spin-wave approximation (SWA). In the present paper we i) go beyond SWA and ii) study impurities with spins $S\ge1/2$. It is demonstrated that in contrast to defects coupled to sublattices asymmetrically longitudinal host spins fluctuations play important role in the frustrated impurity dynamics. The spectral function, that is proportional to $\omega^2$ within SWA, acquires new terms proportional to $\omega^2$ and $\omega T^2$. It is observed that the spin-1/2 impurity susceptibility has the same structure as that obtained within SWA: the Lorenz peak and the non-resonant term. The difference is that the width of the peak becomes larger being proportional to $f^2(T/J)^3$ rather than $f^4(T/J)^3$, where $f$ is the dimensionless coupling parameter. We show that transverse static susceptibility acquires a new negative logarithmic contribution. In accordance with previous works we find that host spins fluctuations lead to an effective one-ion anisotropy on the impurity site. Then defects with $S>1/2$ appears to be split. We observe strong reduction of the value of the splitting due to longitudinal host spins fluctuations. We demonstrate that the dynamical impurity susceptibility contains $2S$ Lorenz peaks corresponding to transitions between the levels, and the non-resonant term.