An exactly solvable supersymmetric spin chain of [formula omitted] type

Abstract

We construct a new exactly solvable supersymmetric spin chain related to the BC N extended root system, which includes as a particular case the BC N version of the Polychronakos–Frahm spin chain. We also introduce a supersymmetric spin dynamical model of Calogero type which yields the new chain in the large coupling limit. This connection is exploited to derive two different closed-form expressions for the chain's partition function by means of Polychronakos's freezing trick. We establish a boson–fermion duality relation for the new chain's spectrum, which is in fact valid for a large class of (not necessarily integrable) spin chains of BC N type. The exact expressions for the partition function are also used to study the chain's spectrum as a whole, showing that the level density is normally distributed even for a moderately large number of particles. We also determine a simple analytic approximation to the distribution of normalized spacings between consecutive levels which fits the numerical data with remarkable accuracy. Our results provide further evidence that spin chains of Haldane–Shastry type are exceptional integrable models, in the sense that their spacings distribution is not Poissonian, as posited by the Berry–Tabor conjecture for “generic” quantum integrable systems.