Berry’s phase and quantum dynamics of ferromagnetic solitons

We study spin parity effects and the quantum propagation of solitons (Bloch walls) in quasi-one-dimensional ferromagnets. Within a coherent state path integral approach we derive a quantum field theory for nonuniform spin configurations. The effective action for the soliton position is shown to contain a gauge potential due to the Berry phase and a damping term caused by the interaction between soliton and spin waves. For temperatures below the anisotropy gap this dissipation reduces to a pure soliton mass renormalization. The quantum dynamics of the soliton in a periodic lattice or pinning potential reveals remarkable consequences of the Berry phase. For half-integer spin, destructive interference between opposite chiralities suppresses nearest-neighbor hopping. Thus the Brillouin zone is halved, and for small mixing of the chiralities the dispersion reveals a surprising dynamical correlation: Two subsequent band minima belong to different chirality states of the soliton. For integer spin the Berry phase is inoperative and a simple tight-binding dispersion is obtained. Finally it is shown that external fields can be used to interpolate continuously between the Bloch wall dispersions for half-integer and integer spin. © 1996 The American Physical Society.