Zigzag materials: selective interchain couplings control the coexistence of one-dimensional physics and deviations from it

Abstract

The coexistence in the low-temperature spin-conducting phases of the zigzag materials BaCo2V2O8 and SrCo2V2O8 of one-dimensional (1D) physics with important deviations from it is not well understood. The studies of this paper account for an important selection rule that follows from interchain spin states being coupled more strongly within the spin dynamical structure factor of such zigzag materials whenever they are connected by a specific symmetry operation of the underlying lattice. In the case of excited states, this symmetry operation is only a symmetry in spin-space ifno electronic spin flip is performed within the generation of such states. Our results on both the role of selective interchain couplings in protecting the 1D physics and being behind deviations from it and on the dynamical properties being controlled by scattering of singlet pairs of physical spins 1/2 open the door to a key advance in the understanding of the physics of the spin chains in BaCo2V2O8 and SrCo2V2O8.

24 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Universal theory of nonlinear Luttinger liquids
• Novel ordering of an S = 1/2 quasi one-dimensional Ising-like anitiferromagnet in magnetic field
• Field-induced incommensurate order for the quasi-one-dimensional XXZ model in a magnetic field
• The two-spinon transverse structure factor of the gapped Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain
• Absence of high-temperature ballistic transport in the spin-$1/2$ $XXX$ chain within the grand-canonical ensemble
• Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid in quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnet BaCo2V2O8 in magnetic fields
• Bethe strings in the dynamical structure factor of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXX chain
• Field-induced antiferromagnetism and Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid behavior in the quasi-one-dimensional Ising-Antiferromagnet SrCo2V2O8
• Vanishing spin stiffness in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain for any nonzero temperature