The spin-partitioned total position-spread tensor: An application to Heisenberg spin chains

Abstract

The spin partition of the Total Position-Spread (TPS) tensor has been performed for one-dimensional Heisenberg chains with open boundary conditions. Both the cases of a ferromagnetic (high-spin) and an anti-ferromagnetic (low- spin) ground-state have been considered. In the case of a low-spin ground- state, the use of alternating magnetic couplings allowed to investigate the effect of spin-pairing. The behavior of the spin-partitioned TPS (SP-TPS) tensor as a function of the number of sites turned to be closely related to the presence of an energy gap between the ground-state and the first excited- state at the thermodynamic limit. Indeed, a gapped energy spectrum is associated to a linear growth of the SP-TPS tensor with the number of sites. On the other hand, in gapless situations, the spread presents a faster-than- linear growth, resulting in the divergence of its per-site value. Finally, for the case of a high-spin wave function, an analytical expression of the dependence of the SP-TPS on the number of sites n and the total spin- projection Sz has been derived.