6.

2 Antiferromagnetic Heisenberg Model 305

overcome the Haldane gap, and induce 3 0 ordering. Thus even the
three-dimensional system can have a disordered ground state25 if IJ’I is
small enough, while it shows antiferromagnetic ordering below a small
Nkel temperature, if IJ’I is larger [224, 3911. However, 3 0 ordering is a
weak effect, and the Haldane gap becomes visible at T > TN.
There are experimental examples of both kinds of behaviour, notably

-
in nickel compounds. Let us recall that in an octahedral environment,
the ion Ni2+ 3d8 has the closed subshell configuration t$ with S = 1,
and no orbital degeneracy, providing good chances for finding a purely
spin Heisenberg model with relatively weak anisotropy26. The same
remains true if the environment is distorted to a lower-symmetry con-
figuration. We mention two materials. YzBaNi05 is a nearly ideal
Haldane gap system with J N 2lmeV [449]. It is estimated that
IJ’/JI < 5-10-4, well below the critical ratio ~ 1 0 - thus ~ , Y2BaNiO5
does not order at any temperature, and the average size ~ 8 . 5 m e Vof
the weakly anisotropic Haldane gap fits (6.115) well. In contrast, in
the compound CsNiCl3 (which can be pictured as a triangular lattice
of weakly coupled Ni-chains), IJ’/.7I~l.8.10-~ which is sufficiently large
to cause three-dimensional ordering below TN = 4.8K. At T < TN, the
spectrum is gapless as in any ordinary antiferromagnet, but the Haldane
gap becomes detectable by neutron scattering at T > TN [53].
The Haldane gap is a spin gap, and it should show up in the ther-
mally activated b e h a ~ i o u rof~ the
~ spin susceptibility

x(T)cx T-1/2exp ( - A / ~ B T ) (6.119)

which is analogous to the Arrhenius law of the conductivity which fol-

lows from the existence of a charge gap. We mention in passing that the
Haldane phenomenon is only one of the possible mechanisms leading to
26Wecan call it a quantum paramagnet to emphasize that we are speaking about
the unique ground state of an interacting system in which long-range correlations are
disrupted by quantum fluctuations.
261tappears that in the substances we mention, one finds very little exchange
anisotropy, and a moderate single-ion anisotropy. We do not go into this, but it has
been shown that the Haldane phase extends over a finite range of anisotropy.
“We can get the T-dependent prefactor by postulating that x is proportional to
the number of thermally excited triplets, and expanding (6.117) about the bottom
of the band. In D-dimensions, the prefactor would be o( T ( D - 2 ) / 2 .