Neutron diffraction and bulk measurements are used to determine the nature of the low-temperature ordered state in LiCu2O2, a S=1/2 spin-chain compound with competing interactions. The spin structure is found to be helimagnetic, with a propagation vector (0.5,zeta,0), zeta=0.174. The nearest-neighbor exchange constant and frustration ratio are estimated to be J(1)=5.8 meV and J(2)/J(1)=0.29, respectively. For idealized quantum spin chains, these parameter values would signify a gapped spin-liquid ground state with commensurate spin correlations. The observed temperature dependence of the magnetic propagation vector in LiCu2O2 is attributed to a competition between incommensurate helimagnetism in the classical spin model and commensurability in the quantum case. It is also proposed that long-range ordering in LiCu2O2 is facilitated by intrinsic nonstoichiometry.

Magnetic excitations in the quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnet IPA-CuCl3 are studied by cold neutron inelastic scattering. Strongly dispersive gap excitations are observed. Contrary to previously proposed models, the system is best described as an asymmetric quantum spin ladder. The observed spectrum is interpreted in terms of composite Haldane spin chains. The key difference from actual S=1 chains is a sharp cutoff of the single-magnon spectrum at a certain critical wave vector.

We discovered a first-order phase transition between dimerzed-antiferromagnetic and uniform-antiferromagnetic phases in impurity-doped spin-Peierls (SP) cuprate Cu1−xMgxGeO3. As impurity concentration increases, linear reduction of SP transition temperature (TSP ) and linear increase of Néel temperature (TN ) are observed up to x ≃ 0.023. At this critical concentration (xc) SP transition suddenly disappears and TN jumps discontinuously. The peak of the susceptibility at xc around TN is not so sharp as those at other concentrations, which indicates the phase separation of low and high concentration phases. These results indicate the existence of the first-order phase transition between dimerizedantiferromagnetic and uniform-antiferromagnetic long-range orders. 75.10.Jm, 75.30.Kz, 75.50.Ee

The quasi-one-dimensional helimagnet LiCu2O2 was studied by single crystal inelastic neutron scattering. The dispersion relation of spin wave excitations was measured in the vicinity of the principal magnetic Bragg reflection. A spin wave theoretical analysis of the data yields an estimate of the relevant exchange constants and explains the mechanism of geometric frustration that leads to helimagnetism. It is found that the simple antiferromagnetic J1 − J2 model that was previously proposed is inadequate for LiCu2O2. The experimental findings are generally in a qualitative agreement with first principal calculations of [A. A. Gippius et al., Phys. Rev. B 70, 020406 (2004)], though certain important discrepancies remain to be explained.

Two quasi-1-dimensional S = 1 quantum antiferromagnetic materials, PbNi2V2O8 and SrNi2V2O8, are studied by inelastic neutron scattering on powder samples. While magnetic interactions in the two systems are found to be very similar, subtle differences in inter-chain interaction strengths and magnetic anisotropy are detected. The latter are shown to be responsible for qualitatively different ground state properties: magnetic long-range order in SrNi2V2O8 and disordered "spin liquid" Haldane-gap state in PbNi2V2O8.