Breakdown of a Magnetization Plateau in Ferrimagnetic Mixed Spin-(1/2,S) Heisenberg Chains Due to a Quantum Phase Transition Towards the Luttinger Spin Liquid

Abstract

Magnetization curves of the ferrimagnetic mixed spin-(1/2,S) Heisenberg chains are calculated with the help of density-matrix renormalization group method for several quantum spin numbers S=1, 3/2, 2 and 5/2. It is shown that the ferrimagnetic mixed spin-(1/2,S) Heisenberg chains exhibit irrespective of the spin value S exactly one intermediate magnetization plateau, which can be identified with the gapped Lieb-Mattis ferrimagnetic ground state. The magnetization plateau due to the Lieb-Mattis ferrimagnetism breaks down at a quantum phase transition towards the Luttinger spin liquid, which is characterized by a continuous change of the magnetization with the magnetic field until another quantum critical point is reached at the saturation field.

3 pages, 1 figure, presented at CSMAG16 conference

References in corpus (1)

• Quantum phase transitions in alternating spin-(1/2, 5/2) Heisenberg chains

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Diversity of quantum ground states and quantum phase transitions of a spin-1/2 Heisenberg octahedral chain
• Frustrated magnetism of spin-1/2 Heisenberg diamond and octahedral chains as a statistical-mechanical monomer-dimer problem
• Magnetic field - temperature phase diagram of ferrimagnetic alternating chains: spin-wave theory from a fully polarized vacuum
• The role of density-dependent magnon hopping and magnon-magnon repulsion in ferrimagnetic spin-(1/2, $S$) chains in a magnetic field