Fate of spinons in spontaneously dimerized spin-(1)/(2) ladders

Journal article

We study a weakly coupled, frustrated two-leg spin-1/2 Heisenberg ladder. For vanishing coupling between the chains, elementary excitations are deconfined, gapless spin-1/2 objects called spinons. We investigate the fate of spinons for the case of a weak interchain interaction. We show that despite a drastic change in ground state, which becomes spontaneously dimerized, spinons survive as elementary excitations but acquire a spectral gap. We furthermore determine the exact dynamical structure factor for several values of momentum transfer. ©2000 The American Physical Society.

Authors: Allen, D; Essler, F; Nersesyan, A

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: Physical Review B
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 13
• Pages: 8871-8877
• Publication date: 2000-04-01
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.61.8871
• EISSN: 1095-3795
• ISSN: 1098-0121
• Language: English