Vector chiral states in low-dimensional quantum spin systems

Abstract

A class of exact spin ground states with nonzero averages of vector spin chirality, $<{\check{S}}_i\times {\check{S}}_j\cdot \hat{z}>$, is presented. It is obtained by applying non-uniform O(2) rotations of spin operators in the XY plane on the SU(2)-invariant Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) states and their parent Hamiltonians. Excitation energies of the new ground states are studied with the use of single-mode approximation in one dimension for S=1. The excitation gap remains robust. Construction of chiral AKLT states is shown to be possible in higher dimensions. We also present a general idea to produce vector chirality-condensed ground states as non-uniform O(2) rotations of the non-chiral parent states. Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is shown to imply non-zero spin chirality.

4 pages, 1 figure

Cited by in corpus (1)

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