Quantum theory of spin waves in finite chiral spin chains

Abstract

We calculate the effect of spin waves on the properties of finite size spin chains with a chiral spin ground state observed on bi-atomic Fe chains deposited on Iridium(001). The system is described with a Heisenberg model supplemented with a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) coupling and a uniaxial single ion anisotropy that presents a chiral spin ground state. Spin waves are studied using the Holstein-Primakoff (HP) boson representation of spin operators. Both the renormalized ground state and the elementary excitations are found by means of Bogoliubov transformation, as a function of the two variables that can be controlled experimentally, the applied magnetic field and the chain length. Three main results are found. First, because of the non-collinear nature of the classical ground state, there is a significant zero point reduction of the ground state magnetization of the spin spiral. Second, the two lowest energy spin waves are edge modes in the spin spiral state that, above a critical field the results into a collinear ferromagnetic ground state, become confined bulk modes. Third, in the spin spiral state, the spin wave spectrum exhibits oscillatory behavior as function of the chain length with the same period of the spin helix.