Thermodynamics of the spin-flop transition in a quantum XYZ chain

Abstract

A special limit of an antiferromagnetic XYZ chain was recently shown to exhibit interesting bulk as well as surface spin-flop transitions at T=0. Here we provide a complete calculation of the thermodynamics of the bulk transition using a transfer-matrix-renormalization-group (TMRG) method that addresses directly the thermodynamic limit of quantum spin chains. We also shed some light on certain spinwave anomalies at low temperature predicted earlier by Johnson and Bonner.