Probing frustrated spin systems with impurities

Abstract

We investigate the effective interaction between two localized spin impurities embedded in a frustrated spin-1/2 $J_1\!-\!J_2$ Heisenberg chain. Treating the impurity spins as classical moments coupled locally to the host, we combine second--order perturbation theory with large--scale density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations to determine the impurity--impurity interaction as a function of separation, coupling strength, and magnetic frustration. In the weak--coupling regime, we show that the interaction is governed by the the static spin susceptibility of the host and exhibits oscillatory power--law decay in the gapless phase, modified by universal logarithmic corrections at the SU(2)--symmetric critical point. In the gapped dimerized phase, the interaction decays exponentially with distance. For intermediate and strong impurity--host coupling, we observe a crossover to a boundary--dominated regime characterized by pronounced parity effects associated with the length of the chain segment between impurities, signaling a breakdown of the simple RKKY--like description. Our results establish impurity--impurity interactions as a sensitive probe of frustrated quantum spin liquids and provide a controlled framework for distinguishing gapless and gapped phases through local perturbations.