ESR Investigation on the Breather Mode and the Spinon-Breather Dynamical Crossover in Cu Benzoate

Abstract

A new elementary-excitation, the so called "breather excitation", is observed directly by millimetersubmillimeter wave electron spin resonance (ESR) in the Heisenberg quantum spin-chain Cu benzoate, in which a field-induced gap is found recently by specific heat and neutron scattering measurements. Distinct anomalies were found in line width and in resonance field around the "dynamical crossover" regime between the gap-less spinon-regime and the gapped breather-regime. When the temperature becomes sufficiently lower than the energy gap, a new ESR-line with very narrow linewidth is found, which is the manifestation of the breather excitation. The non-linear field dependence of the resonance field agrees well with the theoretical formula of the first breather-excitation proposed by Oshikawa and Affleck. The present work establishes experimentally for the first time that a sine-Gordon model is applicable to explain spin dynamics in a S = 1/2 Heisenberg spin chain subjected to staggered field even in high fields.PACS numbers:42.50. Md, 75.40.Gb A magnetic field has been recognized as a unique handling-parameter to control the quantum-critical phenomena in various low-dimensional spin systems. An example of the drastic change of magnetic excitation in high magnetic fields has been found recently in Cu benzoate Cu(C 6 H 5 COO) 2 ·3H 2 O. For a very long time, this compound had been regarded as a good representative of S = 1/2 Heisenberg quantum spin chain (HQSC), with an exchange coupling J = 8.6 K.[1] More recently, however, intensive measurements performed below 1 Kspecific heat, neutron scattering and susceptibility [2,3]-revealed rather unexpected features. Besides the dynamical incommensurability expected in high fields, an unexpected energy-gap E g (H) in the magnetic excitation spectrum was observed to develop as a function of the applied magnetic field H. Based on a field theoretical approach, a description was proposed by Oshikawa and Affleck (OA) [4,5] and, subsequently by Essler and Tsvelik. [6,7] They claimed that these effects were caused by the staggered fields acting between neighboring spins in a chain.(Note that some aspects of the field-induced gap has been discussed theoretically by several authors, [8]) Their most striking theoretical proposal for Cu benzoate is that the particle-like "breather" excitation appears besides solitons, in the extreme low-temperature limit, where the temperature is smaller than the gap.The "breather" is the soliton-antisoliton bound-state and one of the elementary excitations in a quantum sineGordon model. For conventional S = 1/2 HQSC, the gap-less spinon excitation develops due to the short-range correlation when the temperature T is much lower than J. In case of Cu benzoate subjected to the staggered field, for further decrease of the temperature, a drastic change in spin-fluctuation spectrum arises due to the presence of the field-induced energy gap; i.e. the dynamical crossover takes place between the spinon-regime and the gapped breather-regime. In the gapped b...

Exact soliton solution and inelastic two-soliton collision in a spin chain driven by a time-dependent magnetic field

“…The classical Heisenberg spin chain which exhibits both coherent and chaotic structures depending on the nature of the magnetic interactions [1][2][3][4] has attracted considerable attentions in nonlinear science and condensed-matter physics. Solitons in quasi one-dimensional magnetic systems have already been probed experimentally by neutron inelastic scattering [5,6], nuclear magnetic resonance [7,8], Mossbauer linewidth measurements [9], and electron spin resonance [10]. The corresponding theoretical studies are based usually on the Landau-Lifshitz equation [11].…”

Electron Spin Resonance in the Spin-1/2Quasi-One-Dimensional Antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya InteractionBaCuBertaina1, Pashchenko2, Stepanov3 et al. 2004Phys. Rev. Lett.241140View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…In particular, the very low-T regime has been studied in detail in several works [12,13]. There remain, however, interesting open problems related to the low-T and intermediate-T spin dynamics of 1/2HAFC.…”

Field-induced gap in a quantum spin-12chain in a strong magnetic field

“…Such a sineGordon spin model has been found to be realized in a number of compounds [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Among others, copper benzoate [13] and copper pyrimidine dinitrate [15] are the most intensively studied materials.…”