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Low energy properties of even‐legged d ‐dimensional quantum spin systems: a variational approach
Author(s) -
Richert Jean,
Gühne Otfried
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
physica status solidi (b)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1521-3951
pISSN - 0370-1972
DOI - 10.1002/pssb.200743512
Subject(s) - ansatz , wave function , excited state , formalism (music) , physics , ground state , quantum mechanics , quantum entanglement , quantum , spin (aerodynamics) , statistical physics , art , musical , visual arts , thermodynamics
We develop a variational formalism in order to study the gap structure in the spectrum of frustrated quantum spin systems. We introduce a trial wave function of a two‐leg ladder with one spin 1/2 on each site. The domains in which the wave function behaves realistically are determined. In these domains the spectra show a finite energy gap between the ground state and excited states. Under some approximations which are discussed the result can be extended to 2d and higher dimensional systems with an even number of rows. The gap vanishes for specific values of the coupling strengths which correspond to the location of phase transitions. In a second step we introduce quantitative estimates of the relevance of the variational ansatz which rest on the entanglement concept. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)