Co-operative density wave and giant spin gap in the quarter-filled zigzag ladder

Abstract

Strong co-operative interactions occur between four different broken symmetries involving charge-ordering and bond distortions in the quarter-filled correlated zigzag electron ladder. The ground state is singlet, with spin gap several times larger than in the spin-Peierls state of the one-dimensional quarter-filled chain with the same parameters. We propose the quarter-filled zigzag electron ladder model for several different organic charge-transfer solids with coupled pairs of quasi-one-dimensional stacks, the spin-gap transition temperatures in which are unusually high.