336 Ch.

6 Heisenberg Model

magnetic triangular lattice Ising model is exponentially large in L.

Hint: You are not requested to calculate the number of ground states exactly!
It is enough to find a sufficiently numerous subset of ground states. You can
achieve this by fixing the state of a bipartite sublattice, and checking if this
leaves you with enough choice for the rest of the lattice.

Solutions to the Problems

Problem 6.1. Let us choose the state with maximum polarization S" = LS
as the ground state which we denote by 10). The subspace with S" = LS - 1
is spanned by the single-site spin flip states lj) = SJFIO). The Bloch state with
wavevector k is
(6.162)

Let us consider the anisotropic Hamiltonian in an external field

We show that Ik) is an eigenstate of (6.163).

The z-z contribution is

AJ C 5';s; Ik) = ( J A S z + H + Eo)Ik) (6.164)

i ,j

where Eo = - JAS'Z is the ground state energy. To calculate the x-y contri-
+
bution, we recall S*lS, S " ) = \/(SfSz 1)(SF S")lS, S" f l ) , and obtain
J
- c(SpS[
2
+ ScS,')(k) = J S z y ( k ) ( k ) (6.165)
i j

where y(k) was introduced in (6.27). Putting the above results together, the
spin wave energy is
w k = IJlzS(A - yk) H . + (6.166)
With H = 0 we recover (6.38). The result (6.31) for the isotropic model
belongs to A = 1.
The spin wave continuum is separated by a gap IJlzS(A - 1) H from +
the ground state. The external field and the uniaxial anisotropy act in similar
ways in producing the gap.
Now we discuss the case H = 0. w(k) >_ 0 if A >_ 1. This is how it should
be because the condition of the stability of the ground state requires that all