Solitons and (spin-)Peierls transition in disordered quasi-one-dimensional systems

Abstract

We study the (spin-)Peierls transition in quasi-one-dimensional disordered systems, treating the lattice classically. The role of kinks, induced thermally and by disorder, is emphasized. For weak interchain interaction the kinks destroy the coherence between different chains at a temperature significantly lower than the mean-field Peierls transition temperature. We formulate the effective Ising model, which describes such a transition, investigate the doping dependence of the (spin-)Peierls transition temperature and discuss several implications of the picture developed. The results are compared with the properties of the spin-Peierls system CuGeO_3.