Lattice dynamics of the Heisenberg chain coupled to finite frequency bond phonons
Abstract
The phonon dynamics in a one dimensional Heisenberg spin chain coupled to finite-frequency bond phonons is studied. We present the first detailed phonon spectra for these systems using Quantum Monte Carlo. The quantum phase transition is dominated by a central peak, yet the renormalisation of the main phonon branch depends strongly on the bare phonon frequency omega0. The main branch remains largely unaffected at omega0 J, but it softens completely when omega0 is low enough. This is an unusual scenario for a structural phase transition and was observable only on sufficiently large systems. Approaching the dimerized phase from finite temperature, the lattice dynamics mirrors the behavior of a three dimensional system. For the efficient measurement of Greens functions, we introduce a mapping from the stochastic series expansion to continuous imaginary time.