Spin-Peierls vs. Peierls distortions in a family of conjugated Polymers

TL;DR

This paper compares two theoretical approaches to study distortions in conjugated polymers, showing they generally agree on the presence or absence of specific distortions across different polymers.

Contribution

It introduces a combined Valence Bond and tight-binding approach to analyze distortions in conjugated polymers, demonstrating their predictive consistency.

Findings

Both methods predict similar distortion patterns in most polymers.

The approaches are complementary and validate each other's results.

Distortions depend on the specific polymer structure.

Abstract

Distortions in a family of conjugated polymers are studied within two complementary approaches, i.e. within a many-body Valence Bond (VB) approach using a transfer matrix technique to treat the Heisenberg model of the systems, and also in terms of the tight-binding band-theoretic model with interactions limited to nearest neighbors. The computations indicate that both methods predict the presence or absence of the same distortions in most of the polymers studied.