Low-energy excitations in 2-leg and 3-leg quantum spin ladders

Abstract

Low-energy excitations in spin 1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin ladders are studied by bosonization and gauge theoretical description. It is explicitly shown that zero modes in the bosonization play an essentially important role. Low-energy excitations in the 2-leg system is described by spin triplet Majorana fermions, and in the 3-leg case spin excitations on the top and bottom ladders are described by two massless scalar fields. It is predicted that if inter-ladder interaction between the top and bottom chains is introduced, a phase transition occures at some critical coupling and the system acquires an energy gap.