# Modulation structure of a frustrated spin ladder

## Abstract

We study a two-leg spin-1/2 ladder with isotropic exchanges and biquadratic interactions in the basic plaquettes. It is shown that for the extremely frustrated case, the system exhibits a self-organized phase separation. In some parameter regions, the singlet rungs form a Wigner-like lattice in the triplet-rung host. There are three types of elementary excitations in this modulation phase, i.e., the spinons in a triplet domain, the broken singlet rungs and the deformation of the Wigner-like lattice. The flux phase induced by an external magnetic field in the rung-dimerized phase is also discussed.

After the discovery of the ladder superconductors, the current interest in the coupled spin chains has been greatly renewed. It is well established that the regular spin-1/2 ladders with even number of legs have a gaped spin-liquid ground state, while the odd-legged ladders have a gapless spin-liquid ground state. On the other hand, the generalized spin ladders including other couplings beyond the nearest neighbor exchanges, which can interpolate among a variety of systems, have been demonstrated exhibiting remarkably rich behavior. The hamiltonian of the generalized spin ladder reads:

$`H={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}J_1{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{j+1}+\stackrel{}{\tau }_j\stackrel{}{\tau }_{j+1})+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}J_2{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\stackrel{}{\tau }_{j+1}+\stackrel{}{\tau }_j\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{j+1})`$ (1)   
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}J_3{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\stackrel{}{\tau }_j+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}U_1{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{j+1})(\stackrel{}{\tau }_j\stackrel{}{\tau }_{j+1})`$ (2)   
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}U_2{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\stackrel{}{\tau }_{j+1})(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{j+1}\stackrel{}{\tau }_j)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}U_3{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\stackrel{}{\tau }_j)(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{j+1}\stackrel{}{\tau }_{j+1}),`$ (3)   
where $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j`$ ($`\stackrel{}{\tau }_j`$) are Pauli matrices on site $`j`$ of the upper (lower) leg, $`J_\alpha `$ ($`\alpha =1,2,3`$) are the exchange coupling constants and $`U_\alpha `$ are the biquadratic coupling constants. The hamiltonian (1) contains all possible $`SU(2)`$-invariant interactions in a basic plaquette formed by two nearest rungs. We note the biquadratic interactions may be effectively mediated by phonons and their importance for some properties of $`CuO_2`$ plaquette has been pointed out. In addition, current experiments have revealed that such multi-spin interactions are realized in the two-dimensional (2D) solid $`{}_{}{}^{3}He`$, 2D Wigner solid of electrons formed in a $`Si`$ inversion layer, and the $`bcc`$ solid $`{}_{}{}^{3}He`$.

The model (1) has been studied by many authors in some parameter regions. The possible phases including the dimerized phase, the Haldane phase and the rung-dimerized phase have been reported. In addition, the model (1) has a variety of integrable cases  and some gapless phases have been found. All these results indicate that the generalized spin ladder has a very rich ground state phase diagram. In this letter, we study the extremely frustrated, i.e., $`J_1=J_2`$, $`U_1=U_2`$ case. We show that there are three possible phases in this case, i.e., a rung-dimerized (RD) phase, a triplet-rung (TR) phase interpolating between the gapless spin liquid and the Haldane spin liquid or the $`VBS`$ state, and a new gapful phase with modulation structure. The latter phase is a mixed state (MS) consisting of both singlet rungs and triplet rungs and its structure is very similar to a Wigner lattice (crystallization of the singlet rungs) or the flux phase of the type II superconductors (with the singlet rungs as the effective fluxes).

In the extremely frustrated case ($`J_1=J_2`$, $`U_1=U_2`$), the hamiltonian (1) can be rewritten as

$`H=\stackrel{~}{J}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}[\stackrel{}{S}_j\stackrel{}{S}_{j+1}\beta (\stackrel{}{S}_j\stackrel{}{S}_{j+1})^2]`$ (4)   
$`+U{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(2\stackrel{}{S}_j^2)(2\stackrel{}{S}_{j+1}^2)J{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(2\stackrel{}{S}_j^2)+C,`$ (5)   
where $`\stackrel{}{S}_j=(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j+\stackrel{}{\tau }_j)/2`$ is the total spin of the $`j`$-th rung, $`\stackrel{~}{J}=2J_1+U_1`$, $`\beta =2U_1/(2J_1+U_1)`$, $`U=U_3`$, $`J=J_3+U_32U_1`$ and $`C=J_3/2+U_3/45U_1/2`$ is an irrelevant constant. For convenience, we put $`\stackrel{~}{J}=1`$ and omit the irrelevant constant $`C`$ in the following text. The total spin $`S_j`$ takes two possible values $`0,1`$, corresponding to the singlet rungs and triplet rungs, respectively. Based on Eq.(2), the phase diagram of the system can be conjectured roughly. There are three possible types of ground state configurations. For a large enough $`J`$, the singlet rungs are more stable than the triplet rungs. The ground state is a simple product of $`N`$ singlet rungs, i.e., a rung-dimerized state. For a small $`J`$ and large $`U`$, the triplet rungs are dominant over the singlet rungs and the ground state is exactly the same of a generalized spin-1 chain. In some intermediate $`J,U`$ regions, the singlet rungs and the triplet rungs may coexist in the ground state. Since there is no genuine interactions between the singlet rungs and the triplet rungs as we can read off from Eq.(2), a self-organized phase separation occurs in this case. The singlet rungs simply cut the system into disconnected domains of triplet rungs and a positive $`U`$ will stablize a Wigner-like lattice of the singlet rungs in the triplet liquid. Each triplet domain in the mixed state behaves as an open spin-1 chain. Such a mixed state can only be accompanied by a negative boundary energy, as the flux phase in a type II superconductor. We note that $`\beta =\pm 1`$ represent two integrable points of the model (2) and when $`\beta =1/3`$, a $`VBS`$ ground state can be constructed. Very interestingly, the translational invariance is broken in the MS phase and the ground state is no longer a spin liquid but a periodic array of spin-liquid domains.

To give a clear picture, we study one of the integrable cases $`\beta =1`$. In this case, each triplet domain behaves as an $`SU(3)`$-invariant spin-1 chain with open boundaries and can be solved exactly via Bethe ansatz. Let us consider a triplet domain with $`M`$ rungs. The effective hamiltonian of this domain reads

$`H_M={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M1}{}}}[\stackrel{}{S}_j\stackrel{}{S}_{j+1}+(\stackrel{}{S}_j\stackrel{}{S}_{j+1})^2]`$ (6)   
with $`S_j=1`$. The solution of Eq.(3) is exactly the same of the $`SU(3)`$-invariant $`tJ`$ model with pure open boundaries. Its spectrum is determined by the following Bethe ansatz equations (BAE’s)

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _j\frac{i}{2}}{\lambda _j+\frac{i}{2}}}\right)^{2M}={\displaystyle \underset{r=\pm 1}{}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{lj}{\overset{M_1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _jr\lambda _li}{\lambda _jr\lambda _l+i}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{M_2}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _jr\mu _\alpha +\frac{i}{2}}{\lambda _jr\mu _\alpha \frac{i}{2}}}\right],`$ (7)   
$`{\displaystyle \underset{r=\pm 1}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\beta \alpha }{\overset{M_2}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _\alpha r\mu _\beta i}{\mu _\alpha r\mu _\beta +i}}={\displaystyle \underset{r=\pm 1}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M_1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _\alpha r\lambda _j\frac{i}{2}}{\mu _\alpha r\lambda _j+\frac{i}{2}}},`$ (8)   
where $`\lambda _j`$ and $`\mu _\alpha `$ are the rapidities of the spinons and $`M_2<M_1<M`$. The eigen energy of the triplet domain reads:

$`E_M={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M_1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda _j^2+1/4}}+2(M1).`$ (9)   
Notice that the second term in Eq.(5) is also relevant since the number of triplet rungs is not fixed in the whole system. It contributes an amount of -2 to the boundary energy, which is crucial to stablize an MS. For $`M>>1`$, the ground state energy of the triplet domain can be expressed as $`E_M=Mϵ_0+ϵ_b(M)`$, where $`ϵ_0`$ is the energy density of an infinite $`SU(3)`$ spin-1 chain, $`ϵ_b(M)`$ is the boundary energy including the $`O(M^1)`$ finite size correction. Denote the ground state distributions of $`\lambda `$ and $`\mu `$ for $`M\mathrm{}`$ as $`\rho _1(\lambda )`$ and $`\rho _2(\mu )`$ respectively. From the BAE’s (4) we get the following integral equations

$`\rho _1(\lambda )+[2]\rho _1(\lambda )[1]\rho _2(\lambda )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2M}}a_2(\lambda )+a_1(\lambda ),`$ (10)   
$`\rho _2(\mu )+[2]\rho _2(\mu )[1]\rho _1(\mu )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2M}}a_2(\mu ),`$ (11)   
where $`a_n(\lambda )=n/2\pi [\lambda ^2+(n/2)^2]`$ and $`[n]`$ is the integrable operator with kernel $`a_n(\lambda )`$. By solving the above integral equations with Fourier transformation, we obtain

$`\rho _1(\lambda )=\rho _1^0(\lambda )+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}\delta \rho _1(\lambda ),`$ (12)   
$`\rho _1^0(\lambda )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle e^{i\omega \lambda }\frac{2\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\omega }{2}}{4\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{\omega }{2}1}𝑑\omega },`$ (13)   
$`\delta \rho _1(\lambda )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle e^{i\omega \lambda }\frac{e^{\frac{|\omega |}{2}}}{2\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\omega }{2}1}𝑑\omega }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\delta (\lambda ),`$ (14)   
where $`\rho _1^0(\lambda )`$ is the density of $`\lambda `$ of the ground state for $`M\mathrm{}`$ with periodic boundary conditions. The $`\delta (\lambda )`$ term in the third equation of Eq.(7) comes from the $`\lambda =0`$ mode, which is forbidden in an open boundary system. $`ϵ_0`$ and $`ϵ_b(M)`$ can be derived as

$`ϵ_0={\displaystyle \frac{\rho _1^0(\lambda )}{\lambda ^2+1/4}𝑑\lambda }+2=2\mathrm{ln}3{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{3\sqrt{3}}},`$ (15)   
$`ϵ_b(M)={\displaystyle \frac{\delta \rho _1(\lambda )}{\lambda ^2+1/4}}2+O(M^1)={\displaystyle \frac{4}{9}}\sqrt{3}\pi 4+O(M^1).`$ (16)   
Based on Eq.(8), the phase boundaries can be determined exactly. As we discussed above, there are three possible phases, i.e., the RD phase, the TR liquid and the MS phase containing both singlet rungs and triplet rungs. We note that the density of the ground state energy of the rung-dimerized state reads $`ϵ_r=4U2J`$, as we can easily derive from Eq.(2). Therefore, the phase boundary between the RD phase and the TR liquid phase is given by $`4U2J=ϵ_0`$. On the other hand, generating a singlet rung in the TR liquid implys a broken triplet rung and an open boundary. The excitation energy of this process is $`ϵ_b(\mathrm{})ϵ_02J`$. Therefore, the phase boundary between the TR phase and the mixed state is given by $`2J=ϵ_b(\mathrm{})ϵ_0`$. We note the singlet rungs are very similar to the fluxes in a type II superconductor. Here $`ϵ_b(\mathrm{})<0`$ corresponds to the surface energy, while $`2Jϵ_0`$ corresponds to the self energy of the fluxes. When $`2J>ϵ_b(\mathrm{})ϵ_0`$, some singlet rungs appear in the triplet liquid. Here $`J_{c1}=(ϵ_b(\mathrm{})ϵ_0)/2`$ serves as the lower critical field. Due to the finite size correction of $`ϵ_b(M)`$, the singlet rungs are unfavorable to close each other (note $`ϵ_b(M)`$ is an increasing function of $`1/M`$). The lengths of the triplet domains are mainly controlled by the finite size correction. Suppose we have $`N_M=N/(M+1)`$ triplet domains with lengths $`M+\delta _m`$ respectively. The small shifts $`\delta _m`$ satisfy the condition $`_m\delta _m=0`$. The total correction energy reads

$`E_c={\displaystyle \underset{m=1}{\overset{N_M}{}}}[ϵ_b(M+\delta _m)ϵ_b(\mathrm{})]{\displaystyle \underset{m=1}{\overset{N_M}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M+\delta _m}}.`$ (17)   
By minimizing Eq.(9), we get $`\delta _m=0`$, which indicates a periodic array of the singlet rungs in the whole system. This novel modulation structure is very similar to a Wigner lattice or an Abrikosov lattice but with a very different physical interpretation. As in the type II superconductors, there is also an upper bound of $`J`$ corresponding to the upper critical field, which determines the phase boundary between the RD phase and the MS phase. Suppose an MS is stable at $`M=M(J)`$. The phase boundary is given by

$`4U2J=ϵ_{M(J)}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M(J)+1}}[ϵ_{M(J)}2J].`$ (18)   
When $`M(J)1`$, $`J_{c2}4U`$.

Now we turn to the elementary excitations in the MS phase. There are three types of elementary excitations in this case, i.e., the spinons in the triplet domains, broken singlet rungs and the deformation of the Wigner-like lattice. Suppose the lattice is stablized with a period $`M+1`$ ($`M`$ triplet rungs and one singlet rung). The spinons in the present case have a finite energy gap in the order of $`M^1`$ due to the finite length of the domains. For $`M>>1`$, the energy gap can be derived with the well known finite-size-correction techniques. As in the usual integrable models, the excitation energies of the spinons are given by the so-called dressed energies which in our case read (for $`M\mathrm{}`$)

$`ϵ_1(\lambda )=2\pi a_1(\lambda )+[1]ϵ_2(\lambda )[2]ϵ_1(\lambda ),`$ (19)   
$`ϵ_2(\mu )=[1]ϵ_1(\mu )[2]ϵ_2(\mu ).`$ (20)   
The velocities of the two branches of low-energy spinons are equivalent, which read

$`v=\underset{\lambda \mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_1^{}(\lambda )}{2\pi \rho _1^0(\lambda )}}=\underset{\mu \mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_2^{}(\mu )}{2\pi \rho _2^0(\mu )}}`$ (21)   
The energy gap associated with the spinon excitations is thus $`\mathrm{\Delta }\pi v/M`$. There are three different pictures of the spinon excitations: (i)For $`M=3n`$, there is no holes in the $`\lambda `$\- and $`\mu `$-seas in the ground state. The spinons are generated by spin flips. The simplest excitation is a one $`\lambda `$-hole and two $`\mu `$-hole state. (ii)For $`M3n`$, there are some $`\lambda `$\- and $`\mu `$\- holes in the ground state. The mobility of the holes gives the simplest excitation. (iii)For arbitrary $`M`$, there are string excitations. We note all these excitations have the same energy gap.

A broken singlet rung in the modulation phase indicate that two neighboring triplet domains combined to a single domain with length $`2M+1`$. In a stable MS phase, $`M`$ is determined by minimizing the per site energy $`ϵ_M=[ϵ_b(M)ϵ_02J]/(M+1)+ϵ_0`$. For large $`M`$, from $`ϵ_M/M=0`$ we readily obtain $`J[ϵ_b(\mathrm{})ϵ_0]/2M^1`$. Therefore, the excitation energy of a broken singlet rung is $`ϵ_b(2M+1)ϵ_b(M)+ϵ_0+2J`$, which is still in the order of $`M^1`$.

The deformations of the Wigner-like lattice represent another type of excitations in the modulation phase. This type of excitations are static rather than dynamic due to the complete phase separation. Suppose one singlet rung is moved from its equilibrium position by $`\delta M`$. The two neighboring triplet domains connected by this singlet rung are thus enlarged and compressed by $`\delta M`$ respectively. The energy of this process comes mainly from the finite size corrections $`ϵ_b(M+\delta M)+ϵ_b(M\delta M)2ϵ_b(M)`$ and is in the order of $`M^3`$ (notice that $`ϵ_b(M)ϵ_b(\mathrm{})M^1`$), implying the larger the $`M`$, the more unstable the lattice.

A ladder system may exhibit interesting behavior in an external magnetic field. In the TR phase, the system behaves as a two-component Luttinger liquid. The response of the system to the magnetic field is rather usual, i.e., the zero field susceptibility shows a simple Pauli law. In the MS phase, a magnetic field will enlarge the period of the Wigner-like lattice and at a critical field $`H_c`$, the singlet rungs are no longer stable even in the ground state, implying a phase transition between TR phase and MS phase. Two different situations may appear when a magnetic field is applied on the RD phase. Roughly speaking, the magnetic field depresses the effect of $`J`$. Therefore, with the increase of the field, the system flows either toward the TR phase or toward the MS phase. If the system flows to the MS under a magnetic field, some flux phase may appear. Here the triplet rungs with $`S_z=1`$ serve as the fluxes in the singlet-rung host. Since the “repulsive interaction” $`U`$ occurs only between the nearest neighbor singlet rungs, the only possible flux phase has the structure $`|0>_1|1>_2|0>_3\mathrm{}|0>_{N1}|1>_N`$, where $`|0>_i`$ and $`|1>_j`$ indicate the singlet rungs and the triplet rungs, respectively and $`N`$ (even) represents the length of the ladder. With the increase of the external field, the fluxes will clusterize and finally form a triplet-rung liquid or a completely polarized state.

In conclusion, a generalized spin ladder is studied. It is found that in the extremely frustrated case, a modulation structure which represents a Wigner-like lattice of the singlet rungs in the triplet-rung host can exist in some parameter regions. Though only the $`\beta =1`$ case is studied in detail, similar phenomena may exist for arbitrary $`\beta `$. The only difference is that the TR domains in $`\beta =1`$ case may be replaced by Haldane domains or VBS domains.

The author is indebted to the hospitality of Institut für Physik, Universität Augsburg, where this work was initiated. This work was partially supported by AvH-Stiftung, NSFC, FCAS and NOYSFC.