Magnetic Excitations of Stripes Near a Quantum Critical Point

Abstract

We calculate the dynamical spin structure factor of spin waves for weakly coupled stripes. At low energy, the spin wave cone intensity is strongly peaked on the inner branches. As energy is increased, there is a saddlepoint followed by a square-shaped continuum rotated 45 degree from the low energy peaks. This is reminiscent of recent high energy neutron scattering data on the cuprates. The similarity at high energy between this semiclassical treatment and quantum fluctuations in spin ladders may be attributed to the proximity of a quantum critical point with a small critical exponent $\eta$.