Low Energy Properties of Ferrimagnetic 2-leg Ladders: a Lanczos study

Abstract

We apply the Lanczos method to a 2-leg ladder with mixed spins of magnitudes $(S_1,S_2)=(1,1/2)$ located at alternating positions along the ladder. The effect of dimerization $γ$ is also considered according to two different patterns. A Spin Wave Theory (SWT) is applied to this model predicting one gapless branch with ferromagnetic properties and another gapful branch with antiferromagnetic nature as low energy excitations of the model. We compute the ground state energies, Ferro- and AF-excitation gaps, magnetizations and correlation functions as a function of $J'$ and $γ$ which results into a fine estimate of the phase diagram. The Lanczos results are compared with the SWT analysis and a qualitative agreement is found but with numerical discrepancies. We also study numerically the Spin-Peierls instability and find that it is conditional for any value of $ J' \in (0, 2)$ and both dimerization patterns.