Non-equilibrium properties of the S=1/2 Heisenberg model in a time-dependent magnetic field

The time-dependent behavior of the Heisenberg model in contact with a phonon heat bath and in an external time-dependent magnetic field is studied by means of a path integral approach. The action of the phonon heat bath is taken into account up to the second order in the coupling to the heath bath. It is shown that there is a minimal value of the magnetic field below which the average magnetization of the system does not relax to equilibrium when the external magnetic field is flipped. This result is in qualitative agreement with the mean field results obtained within $\phi^{4}$-theory.Comment: To be published in Physica

Charge dynamics in half-filled Hubbard chains with finite on-site interaction

We study the charge dynamic structure factor of the one-dimensional Hubbard model with finite on-site repulsion U at half filling. Numerical results from the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group are analyzed by comparison with the exact spectrum of the model. The evolution of the line shape as a function of U is explained in terms of a relative transfer of spectral weight between the two-holon continuum that dominates in the limit U\to \infty and a subset of the two-holon-two-spinon continuum that reconstructs the electron-hole continuum in the limit U\to 0. Power-law singularities along boundary lines of the spectrum are described by effective impurity models that are explicitly invariant under spin and \eta-spin SU(2) rotations. The Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition is reflected in a discontinuous change of the exponents of edge singularities at U=0. The sharp feature observed in the spectrum for momenta near the zone boundary is attributed to a Van Hove singularity that persists as a consequence of integrability.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figure

Decoupling of the S=1/2 antiferromagnetic zig-zag ladder with anisotropy

The spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic zig-zag ladder is studied by exact diagonalization of small systems in the regime of weak inter-chain coupling. A gapless phase with quasi long-range spiral correlations has been predicted to occur in this regime if easy-plane (XY) anisotropy is present. We find in general that the finite zig-zag ladder shows three phases: a gapless collinear phase, a dimer phase and a spiral phase. We study the level crossings of the spectrum,the dimer correlation function, the structure factor and the spin stiffness within these phases, as well as at the transition points. As the inter-chain coupling decreases we observe a transition in the anisotropic XY case from a phase with a gap to a gapless phase that is best described by two decoupled antiferromagnetic chains. The isotropic and the anisotropic XY cases are found to be qualitatively the same, however, in the regime of weak inter-chain coupling for the small systems studied here. We attribute this to a finite-size effect in the isotropic zig-zag case that results from exponentially diverging antiferromagnetic correlations in the weak-coupling limit.Comment: to appear in Physical Review