Effects of randomness on the antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain

V. Brunel, Th. Jolicoeur

Published 1998-06-12Version 1

We investigate the effect of weak randomness on the antiferromagnetic anisotropic spin-1 chain. We use Abelian bosonization to construct the low-energy effective theory. A renormalization group calculation up to second order in the strength of the disorder is performed on this effective theory. We observe in this framework the destruction of the antiferromagnetic ordered phase `a la Imry-Ma. We predict the effects of a random magnetic field along z axis, a random field in the XY plane as well as random exchange with and without XY symmetry. Instabilities of massless phases appear in general by mechanisms different from the case of the 2-leg spin ladder.