Bond disorder and breakdown of ballistic heat transport in the spin-12 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain as seen in Ca-doped SrCuO 2

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • N. Hlubek - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • P. Ribeiro - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • R. Saint-Martin - , French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) (Author)
  • S. Nishimoto - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • A. Revcolevschi - , French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) (Author)
  • S. L. Drechsler - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • G. Behr - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • J. Trinckauf - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • J. E. Hamann-Borrero - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • J. Geck - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • B. Büchner - , Chair of Experimental Solid State Physics, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)
  • C. Hess - , Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Author)

Abstract

We study the impact of a weak bond disorder on the spinon heat transport in the S=1/2 antiferromagnetic (AFM) Heisenberg chain material Sr 1-xCa xCuO 2. We observe a drastic suppression in the magnetic heat conductivity κ mag even at tiny disorder levels (i.e., Ca-doping levels), in stark contrast to previous findings for κ mag of S=1/2 two-dimensional square lattice and two-leg spin-ladder systems, where a similar bond disorder has no effect on κ mag. Hence, our results underpin the exceptional role of integrability of the S=1/2 AFM Heisenberg chain model and suggest that the bond disorder effectively destroys the ballistic nature of its heat transport. We further show that the suppression of κ mag is captured by an effective spinon-impurity scattering length, which exhibits the same doping dependence as the long-distance exponential decay length of the spin-spin correlation as determined by density-matrix renormalization group calculations.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number214419
JournalPhysical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
Volume84
Issue number21
Publication statusPublished - 9 Dec 2011
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-2438-0672/work/158767786