Thermal conductivity of spin-12 chains

E. Shimshoni, N. Andrei, and A. Rosch
Phys. Rev. B 68, 104401 – Published 2 September 2003; Erratum Phys. Rev. B 72, 059903 (2005)
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Abstract

We study the low-temperature transport properties of clean one-dimensional spin-12 chains coupled to phonons. Due to the presence of approximate conservation laws, the heat current decays very slowly giving rise to an exponentially large heat conductivity, κeT*/T. As a result of an interplay of umklapp scattering and spinon-phonon coupling, the characteristic energy scale T* turns out to be of order ΘD/2, where ΘD is the Debye energy, rather than the magnetic exchange interaction J—in agreement with recent measurements in SrCuO compounds. A large magnetic field h strongly affects the heat transport by two distinct mechanisms. First, it induces a linear spinon-phonon coupling, which alters the nature of the T0 fixed point: the elementary excitations of the system are composite spinon-phonon objects. Second, the change of the magnetization and the corresponding change of the wave vector of the spinons strongly affects the way in which various umklapp processes can relax the heat current, leading to a characteristic fractal-like spiky behavior of κ(T,h) as a function of h.

  • Received 28 April 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.68.104401

©2003 American Physical Society

Erratum

Erratum: Thermal conductivity of spin-12 chains [Phys. Rev. B 68, 104401 (2003)]

E. Shimshoni, N. Andrei, and A. Rosch
Phys. Rev. B 72, 059903 (2005)

Authors & Affiliations

E. Shimshoni1,2, N. Andrei2, and A. Rosch3

  • 1Department of Mathematics–Physics, University of Haifa at Oranim, Tivon 36006, Israel
  • 2Center for Materials Theory, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8019, USA
  • 3Institut für Theorie der Kondensierten Materie, Universität Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany

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Vol. 68, Iss. 10 — 1 September 2003

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