320 Ch.

6 Heisenberg Magnets

that it has short-range correlations, and the spectrum is gapped.

The only trouble is that it can be checked that IVBS) is not the
ground state of the S = 1 AF Heisenberg model. What good is it then?
Well, once one finds such a beautiful state, one is not willing to discard
it, but instead one finds the problem for which it is the solution. We
construct a Hamiltonian for which IVBS) is the ground state, following
the same strategy by which we proved that the dimer states are the
ground states of (6.140). In general, two S = 1 spins can be combined
+
into IS1 S2l = 2, 1, and 0. Let us, however, observe that in (VBS),
the four S = 1/2 spins making up two neighbouring S = 1 spins cannot
add up to 2, because two of them form a singlet, and thus the rest can
make only a singlet or a triplet.
Now consider the following expression of two S = 1 operators
1
P = s1-s2 + -(S1*
3
+ -23 .
s2)2 (6.146)

It is easy to check that P projects onto the subspace IS1 Sal = 2. It +

is generally true that the smallest eigenvalue of a projection operator is
0. Consequently, the ground states of P are those which do not contain
+
a IS1 ,321 = 2 component. Generalizing for the lattice, IVBS) is a
ground state of the VBS-point bilinear-biquadratic Hamiltonian

(6.147)

(we omitted the additive constant). It can be shown that the ground
state is unique4', if we use periodic boundary condition. The effect of
free chain ends will be discussed later.
The lesson is that though IVBS) is not the ground state of the Hei-
senberg model, it is the ground state of a related bilinear-biquadratic
model. Both the Heisenberg model and RVBScan be regarded as special
cases of the general bilinear-biquadratic model
7-l = c
j
[ J S j .Sj+l + &(Sj * Sj+#] . (6.148)

40Looking at the graphical representation (6.145),we might have thought that

there are two degenerate ground states, because the starting bond [12] can be placed
in either the lower, or the upper, row. However, it follows from the process of
symmetrization that we do not distinguish the bonds emanating from a site [lo].