Boundary susceptibility in the spin-1/2 chain: Curie like behavior without magnetic impurities

Journal article, 2004

We investigate the low-temperature thermodynamics of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with open ends. On the basis of boundary conformal field theory arguments and numerical density matrix renormalization group calculations, it is established that in the isotropic case the impurity susceptibility exhibits a Curie-like divergent behavior as the temperature decreases, even in the absence of magnetic impurities. A similar singular temperature dependence is also found in the boundary contributions of the specific heat coefficient. In the anisotropic case, for 1/2