Ground-state magnetization of polymerized spin chains

Abstract

We investigate the ground-state magnetization plateaus appearing in spin-1/2 polymerized Heisenberg chains under external magnetic fields. The associated fractional quantization scenario and the exponents which characterize the opening of gapful excitations are analyzed by means of Abelian bosonization methods. Our conclusions are fully supported by the extrapolated results obtained from Lanczos diagonalizations of finite systems.