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Path integrals, diffusion on \(SU(2)\) and the fully frustrated antiferromagnetic spin cluster. (English) Zbl 1064.82023

Summary: We study the path-integral treatment of the quantum mechanics of a fully frustrated cluster of spins: a cluster in which every pair of spins is coupled equally by antiferromagnetic Heisenberg interactions. Such clusters are interesting partly because they are the building blocks of geometrically frustrated spin systems. Using a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation to decouple the interactions, the Boltzmann factor for the spin cluster is written in terms of the time-evolution operator for a single spin in a stochastically varying magnetic field. The time-evolution operator follows a random walk in \(\text{SU}(2)\): by switching from a Langevin to a Fokker-Planck description of this walk and computing the probability distribution of its end-point, we arrive at an expression for the partition function as a finite sum of single integrals. The calculation provides an analytically tractable illustration of the auxiliary field approach, as used in quantum Monte Carlo calculations, and may potentially be extended to treat more complex frustrated spin systems.

MSC:

82C20 Dynamic lattice systems (kinetic Ising, etc.) and systems on graphs in time-dependent statistical mechanics
82C31 Stochastic methods (Fokker-Planck, Langevin, etc.) applied to problems in time-dependent statistical mechanics
82D40 Statistical mechanics of magnetic materials
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