Effect of spin-1 impurities in dimerized Heisenberg chains

The effects of spin-1 impurities introduced in dimerized antiferromagnetic spin chains are studied using Lanczos diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. First, the magnitude of the interaction between a Ni ion replacing a Cu ion is derived for the case study system Cu-O-Cu. Then, it is shown that the introduction of S=1 impurities leads to the suppression of the original spin gap of the dimerized system and to the enhancement of the antiferromagnetic correlations close to the impurity. These features are interpreted in terms of a valence bond picture of the ground state of both the pure and the doped system. The similitudes and differences between the underlying mechanisms that produce these effects in the cases of nonmagnetic and S=1 impurities are analyzed. It is stressed that a singlet formed between the spin-1 impurity site and the two spin-1/2 neighbors spins behaves as an effective nonmagnetic vacancy which may be partially responsible for the enhancement of the antiferromagnetic correlations on the whole system. Implications of these results for experiment are also discussed.