Singular solutions, repeated roots and completeness for higher-spin chains

We investigate the completeness of the solutions of the Bethe equations for the integrable spin-s isotropic (XXX) spin chain with periodic boundary conditions. Solutions containing the exact string i s, i (s-1), ..., -i(s-1), -is are singular. For s>1/2, there exist also "strange" solutions with repeated roots, which nevertheless are physical (i.e., correspond to eigenstates of the Hamiltonian). We derive conditions for the singular solutions and the solutions with repeated roots to be physical. We formulate a conjecture for the number of solutions with pairwise distinct roots in terms of the numbers of singular and strange solutions. Using homotopy continuation, we solve the Bethe equations numerically for s=1 and s=3/2 up to 8 sites, and find some support for the conjecture. We also exhibit several examples of strange solutions.Comment: 17 pages; many tables provided as supplemental material; v2: minor change

Counting solutions of the Bethe equations of the quantum group invariant open XXZ chain at roots of unity

We consider the sl(2)_q-invariant open spin-1/2 XXZ quantum spin chain of finite length N. For the case that q is a root of unity, we propose a formula for the number of admissible solutions of the Bethe ansatz equations in terms of dimensions of irreducible representations of the Temperley-Lieb algebra; and a formula for the degeneracies of the transfer matrix eigenvalues in terms of dimensions of tilting sl(2)_q-modules. These formulas include corrections that appear if two or more tilting modules are spectrum-degenerate. For the XX case (q=exp(i pi/2)), we give explicit formulas for the number of admissible solutions and degeneracies. We also consider the cases of generic q and the isotropic (q->1) limit. Numerical solutions of the Bethe equations up to N=8 are presented. Our results are consistent with the Bethe ansatz solution being complete.Comment: 34 pages; v2: reference added; v3: two more references added and minor correction