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We investigated the magnetoelastic properties of the quasi-one-dimensional spin-1/2 frustrated magnet LiCuVO$_4$. Longitudinal-magnetostriction experiments were performed at 1.5 K in high magnetic fields of up to 60 T applied along the $b$ axis, i.e., the spin-chain direction. The magnetostriction data qualitatively resemble the magnetization results, and saturate at $H_{\text{sat}} \approx 54$ T, with a relative change in sample length of $\Delta L/L \approx 1.8\times10^{-4}$. Remarkably, both the magnetostriction and the magnetization evolve gradually between $H_{\text{c3}} \approx 48$ T and $H_{\text{sat}}$, indicating that the two quantities consistently detect the spin-nematic phase just below the saturation. Numerical analyses for a weakly coupled spin-chain model reveal that the observed magnetostriction can overall be understood within an exchange-striction mechanism. Small deviations found may indicate nontrivial changes in local correlations associated with the field-induced phase transitions., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures

We study the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg model with antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor J_1 and next-nearest-neighbor J_2 exchange couplings in magnetic field h. With varying dimensionless parameters J_2/J_1 and h/J_1, the ground state of the model exhibits several phases including three gapped phases (dimer, 1/3-magnetization plateau, and fully polarized phases) and four types of gapless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) phases which we dub TLL1, TLL2, spin-density-wave (SDW_2), and vector chiral phases. From extensive numerical calculations using the density-matrix renormalization-group method, we investigate various (multiple-)spin correlation functions in detail, and determine dominant and subleading correlations in each phase. For the one-component TLLs, i.e., the TLL1, SDW_2, and vector chiral phases, we fit the numerically obtained correlation functions to those calculated from effective low-energy theories of TLLs, and find good agreement between them. The low-energy theory for each critical TLL phase is thus identified, together with TLL parameters which control the exponents of power-law decaying correlation functions. For the TLL2 phase, we develop an effective low-energy theory of two-component TLL consisting of two free bosons (central charge c=1+1), which explains numerical results of entanglement entropy and Friedel oscillations of local magnetization. Implications of our results to possible magnetic phase transitions in real quasi-one-dimensional compounds are also discussed., Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures. v2: published version

The manipulation of locked intrinsic localized modes/discrete breathers is studied experimentally in nonlinear electric transmission line arrays. Introducing a static lattice impurity in the form of a capacitor, resistor or inductor has been used both to seed or destroy and attract or repel these localized excitations. In a nonlinear di-element array counter propagating short electrical pulses traveling in the acoustic branch are used to generate a stationary intrinsic localized mode in the optic branch at any particular lattice site. By changing the pulse polarity the same localized excitation can be eliminated demonstrating that the dynamical impurity associated with the propagating electrical pulse in the acoustic branch can trigger optical localized mode behavior., Comment: submitted

We consider interacting electrons in a quantum wire in the case of a shallow confining potential and low electron density. In a certain range of densities, the electrons form a two-row (zigzag) Wigner crystal whose spin properties are determined by nearest and next-nearest neighbor exchange as well as by three- and four-particle ring exchange processes. The phase diagram of the resulting zigzag spin chain has regions of complete spin polarization and partial spin polarization in addition to a number of unpolarized phases, including antiferromagnetism and dimer order as well as a novel phase generated by the four-particle ring exchange., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

We study the renormalization of a single impurity potential in one-dimensional interacting electron systems in the presence of magnetic field. Using the bosonization technique and Bethe ansatz solutions, we determine the renormalization group flow diagram for the amplitudes of scattering of up- and down-spin electrons by the impurity in a quantum wire at low electron density and in the Hubbard model at less than half filling. In the absence of magnetic field the repulsive interactions are known to enhance backscattering and make the impurity potential impenetrable in the low-energy limit. On the contrary, we show that in a strong magnetic field the interaction may suppress the backscattering of majority-spin electrons by the impurity potential in the vicinity of the weak-potential fixed point. This implies that in a certain temperature range the impurity becomes almost transparent for the majority-spin electrons while it is impenetrable for the minority-spin ones. The impurity potential can thus have a strong spin-filtering effect., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures; v2: a typo corrected and a reference added; v3: published version, Sec.II revised with an additional explanatory subsection, comments on the case of more than half-filling added, typos corrected, a reference updated

Exact low-temperature asymptotic behavior of boundary contribution to specific heat and susceptibility in the one-dimensional spin-1/2 XXZ model with exchange anisotropy 1/2 < \Delta \le 1 is analytically obtained using the Abelian bosonization method. The boundary spin susceptibility is divergent in the low-temperature limit. This singular behavior is caused by the first-order contribution of a bulk leading irrelevant operator to boundary free energy. The result is confirmed by numerical simulations of finite-size systems. The anomalous boundary contributions in the spin isotropic case are universal., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; corrected typos

We present accurate numerical estimates for the correlation amplitudes of leading and main subleading terms of the two- and four-spin correlation functions in the one-dimensional spin-1/2 XXZ model under a magnetic field. These data are obtained by fitting the correlation functions, computed numerically with the density-matrix renormalization-group method, to the corresponding correlation functions in the low-energy effective theory. For this purpose we have developed the Abelian bosonization approach to the spin chain under the open boundary conditions. We use the numerical data of the correlation amplitudes to quantitatively estimate spin gaps induced by a transverse staggered field and by exchange anisotropy., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

Recent experiments of the quasi-one-dimensional spin-1/2 antiferromagnet Copper Benzoate established the existence of a magnetic field induced gap. The observed neutron scattering intensity exhibits resolution limited peaks at both the antiferromagnetic wave number and at incommensurate wave numbers related to the applied magnetic field. We determine the ratio of spectral weights of these peaks within the framework of a low-energy effective field theory description of the problem., Comment: 5 pages, 3figures

Recent studies on the frustrated quantum spin chains with easy-plane anisotropy are reviewed. We are particularly interested in novel "chiral" phases characterized by the spontaneous breaking of the parity symmetry. The ground-state phase diagrams of the chains are discussed., Comment: 6 pages (ptptex.sty), 3 figures, to appear in Prog. Theor. Phys. Suppl. (Proc. of the 16th Nishinomiya-Yukawa Symposium and YITP International Workshop, Nov. 2001)

We study the ground-state spin correlations in the gapless incommensurate regime of a S=1/2 XXZ chain and a two-leg antiferromagnetic ladder under a magnetic field, in which the gapless excitations form a Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid. We calculate numerically the two-spin correlation functions and the local magnetization in the two models using the density-matrix renormalization-group method. By fitting the numerical results for an open XXZ chain of 100 spins to correlation functions of a Gaussian model, we determine the TL-liquid parameter K and the amplitudes of the correlation functions. The value of K estimated from the fits is in excellent agreement with the exact value obtained from the Bethe ansatz. We apply the same method to the open ladder consisting of 200 spins and determine the dependence of K on the magnetization M. The K-M relation changes drastically depending on the ratio of the coupling constants in the leg and rung directions. We also discuss implications of these results to experiments on the nuclear spin relaxation rate 1/T_1 and dynamical spin structure factors., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures

The ground-state phase diagram of the frustrated spin-S XXZ chain with the competing nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic couplings is studied numerically by using the density-matrix renormalization-group method for the cases of S = 1/2, 3/2, and 2. We are paricularly interested in the possible gapless and gapped chiral phases, in which the chirality \kappa_l = S_l^x S_{l+1}^y - S_l^y S_{l+1}^x exhibits a finite long-range order whereas the spin correlation decays either algebraically or exponentially. We show that the gapless chiral phase appears in a broad region of the phase diagram for general S. By contrast, the gapped chiral phase is found for integer S in a narrow region of the phase diagram, while it has not been identified for half-odd integer S within our numerical accuracy. By combining the results with our previous result for S = 1, we discuss the S-dependence of the phase diagram. The prediction from a bosonization analysis on the decay exponent of the spin correlation is verified., Comment: 15 pages including 10 figures, REVTeX, submitted to Physical Review B

The ordering of the frustrated S=1/2 XY spin chain with the competing nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic couplings, J_1 and J_2, is studied by using the density-matrix renormalization-group method. It is found that besides the well-known spin-fluid and dimer phases the chain exhibits gapless `chiral' phase characterized by the spontaneous breaking of parity, in which the long-range order parameter is a chirality, \kappa _l=S_l^xS_{l+1}^y-S_l^yS_{l+1}^x, whereas the spin correlation decays algebraically. The dimer phase is realized for 0.33 \lsim j = J_2/J_1 \lsim 1.26 while the chiral phase is realized for j \gsim 1.26., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Canadian Journal of Physics for the Proceedings of the Highly Frustrated Magnetism 2000 Conference, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, June 11-15, 2000. Revised version; error bar of jc and discussion on the chiral dimer phase changed, references updated

The ground-state phase diagram of frustrated S=1 XXZ spin chains with the competing nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic couplings is studied using the infinite-system density-matrix renormalization-group method. We find six different phases, namely, the Haldane, gapped chiral, gapless chiral, double Haldane, N\'{e}el, and double N\'{e}el (uudd) phases. The gapped and gapless chiral phases are characterized by the spontaneous breaking of parity, in which the long-range order parameter is a chirality, \kappa_l = S_l^xS_{l+1}^y-S_l^yS_{l+1}^x, whereas the spin correlation decays either exponentially or algebraically. These chiral ordered phases appear in a broad region in the phase diagram for \Delta < 0.95, where \Delta is an exchange-anisotropy parameter. The critical properties of phase transitions are also studied., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, to appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn

We calculate the ground-state two-spin correlation functions of spin-1/2 quantum Heisenberg chains with random exchange couplings using the real-space renormalization group scheme. We extend the conventional scheme to take account of the contribution of local higher multiplet excitations in each decimation step. This extended scheme can provide highly accurate numerical data for large systems. The random average of staggered spin correlations of the chains with random antiferromagnetic (AF) couplings shows algebraic decay like $1/r^2$, which verifies the Fisher's analytic results. For chains with random ferromagnetic (FM) and AF couplings, the random average of generalized staggered correlations is found to decay more slowly than a power-law, in the form close to $1/\ln(r)$. The difference between the distribution functions of the spin correlations of the random AF chains and of the random FM-AF chains is also discussed., Comment: 14 pages including 8 figures, REVTeX, submitted to Physical Review B

Ordering of frustrated S=1/2 and 1 XY and Heisenberg spin chains with the competing nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic couplings is studied by exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization-group methods. It is found that the S=1 XY chain exhibits both gapless and gapped `chiral' phases characterized by the spontaneous breaking of parity, in which the long-range order parameter is a chirality, $\kappa_i = S_i^xS_{i+1}^y-S_i^yS_{i+1}^x$, whereas the spin correlation decays either algebraically or exponentially. Such chiral phases are not realized in the S=1/2 XY chain nor in the Heisenberg chains., Comment: 4 pages, 5 EPS-figures, LaTeX(RevTeX),to appear in J.Phys.Soc.Japan

The density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) is a numerical method that optimizes a variational state expressed by a tensor product. We show that the ground state is not fully optimized as far as we use the standard finite system algorithm, that uses the block structure B**B. This is because the tensors are not improved directly. We overcome this problem by using the simpler block structure B*B for the final several sweeps in the finite iteration process. It is possible to increase the numerical precision of the finite system algorithm without increasing the computational effort., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

The density-matrix renormalization-group technique is used to calculate the spin correlation functions and of the one-dimensional S=1/2 XXZ model in the gapless regime. The numerical results for open chains of 200 spins are analyzed by comparing them with correlation functions calculated from a low-energy field theory. This gives precise estimates of the amplitudes of the correlation functions in the thermodynamic limit. The exact amplitude recently conjectured by Lukyanov and Zamolodchikov and the logarithmic correction in the Heisenberg model are confirmed numerically., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, final version

The Kondo effect in a one-dimensional spin-1/2 XXZ model in the gapless XY regime (-1

Ground-state and thermodynamic properties of the one-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet in which two S=1/2 and two S=1 spins are arranged alternatively are studied by a quantum Monte Carlo method and by analytical estimates. It is found that the ground state of the system undergoes a second-order phase transition which accompanies the vanishing of the energy gap., Comment: 6 pages; 3 JPG figures; plain TEX; to be published in J. Magn. Magn. Mater. (Proc. Int. Conf. Magnetism, Cairns, 1997)