Commensurate and Incommensurate Phases of a Spin-Peierls System

Abstract

The interest in the study of spin-Peierls phenomenon has increased with the discovery of copper germanium oxide (CuGeO_3) as an example of spin-Peierls systems. The availability of this inorganic compound as large, high quality single crystals, allow experimental measurements which aid in understanding the spin-Peierls phenomenon. This report details the numerical and analytical work done on the various magnetic phases that occur in a quasi-one-dimensional spin-Peierls system (like that of copper germanium oxide). Taking the system to be finite, the bond displacements, single particle energies, energy eigenfunctions, spin densities and phonon frequencies are calculated numerically for all possible magnetizations, which includes both the commensurate and incommensurate phases, at zero temperature. Solitons of fractional spin are found to be present in the system for appropriate magnetizations. The uniform to dimerized phase transition occurring in this system is also modelled numerically. The single particle and ground-state energies are later obtained theoretically for the uniform and dimerized phases. In addition, the lattice spin displacements are analytically modelled for a particular magnetization of the system.