XY Phase in the Ground State of the Spin-1/2 Anisotropic Alternating Heisenberg Chain

Abstract

The location of the XY phase in the ground-state phase diagram of the spin-1/2 anisotropic ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic alternating Heisenberg chain is determined. This model reduces to the spin-1 XXZ chain if the ferromagnetic bond is infinitely strong. The phase boundary between the XY phase and the Haldane phase is determined from the analysis of the numerically obtained energy spectrum of finite-sized systems with the open boundary condition. Our results are consistent with the series-expansion results by Yamanaka et al . within their error bars. The boundary between the ferromagnetic phase and the XY phase is also determined by comparing the energy eigenvalues of these two phases.