Phases of random antiferromagnetic spin-1 chains

Abstract

We formulate a real-space renormalization scheme that allows a study of the effects of bond randomness in the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain. There are four types of bonds that appear during the renormalization flow. We implement the decimation procedure numerically. We give a detailed study of the probability distributions of all these bonds in the phases that occur when the strength of the disorder is varied. Approximate flow equations are obtained in the weak-disorder regime as well as in the strong-disorder case, where the physics is that of the random-singlet phase.