Gapped Heisenberg spin chains in a field

Abstract

We consider the fully anisotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 antiferromagnet in a uniform magnetic field, whose ground-state is characterized by broken spin rotation symmetry and gapped spinon excitations. We expand on a recent mean-field approach to the problem by incorporating fluctuations in a loop expansion. Quantitative results for the magnetization, excitation gap and specific heat are obtained. We compare our predictions with new DMRG and exact diagonalization data and, for zero field, with the exact solution of the ${XYZ}$ spin chain from the Bethe Ansatz.