Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 88
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-30979-4

Regular Article

Compressibility of deformable spin chains near quantum critical points

¹ Institute for Condensed Matter Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 1 Svientsitskii Street, 79011 L’viv-11, Ukraine
² Department for Theoretical Physics, Ivan Franko National University of L’viv, 12 Drahomanov Street, 79005 L’viv-5, Ukraine
³ Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera 11, 34151 Trieste, Italy
⁴ Department of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Faculty of Science, P.J. Šafárik University, Park Angelinum 9, 04001 Košice, Slovak Republic
⁵ Department of Applied Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University, Letná 9, 04200 Košice, Slovak Republic

^a e-mail: derzhko@icmp.lviv.ua

Received: 25 October 2012
Received in final form: 20 December 2012
Published online: 11 March 2013

Abstract

We calculate the ground-state compressibility of a deformable spin-1/2 Heisenberg-Ising chain with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction to discuss how a quantum critical point inherent in this spin system may manifest itself in the elastic properties of the underlying lattice. We compare these results with the corresponding ones for the spin-1/2 Ising chain in a longitudinal or transverse field and the spin-1/2 XX chain in a transverse field. The inverse compressibility of the spin-1/2 XX chain in a transverse field exhibits a hysteresis in the vicinity of quantum critical point that is accompanied with the finite jump of compressibility. Contrary to this, the inverse compressibility diminishes continuously close to a quantum critical point of the spin-1/2 Ising chain in a transverse field and the spin-1/2 Heisenberg-Ising bond alternating chain.