6.

3 Ndel Order versus Valence Bond States 313

For even L, the ground state can be sought in the S&, = 0 subspace.

-
A configuration can be specified by the sites g1,..., gLj2 where ?-spins
are sitting; we will use the simple notation Igl,. . . , g L / 2 ) lp). The
ground state (which we assume to be normalized) can be written as

Let us write the Hamiltonian as

The Ising term is diagonal in the present representation but connects

the configuration 111) to its “neighbours” lp’(p)). We assume that the
lattice can be divided into alternate sublattices A and B in such a way
that 3c* connects A-sites only to B-sites, and vice versa. In general,
the problem of minimizing

with respect to the coefficients a(p) cannot be solved. However, we

can solve a restricted problem: Let us assume that the la(p)l are fixed.
What is the optimal choice of the phase factors? The relative phases
do not matter for the Ising term (which contains only la(p)I2),but they
influence the contribution of the z-y term. We want each a*($)a(p) to
be as negative as possible. It is obvious that the optimum is reached if

for all p, p‘(p) simultaneously. This can be achieved by imposing the

Marshall-Peierls sign rule [261]

4-4= (-1)p(p)14P)l (6.137)

where p ( p ) is the number of ?-spins on sublattice A. Namely, a spin-

flip event (which is alway affecting an A-site and a B-site) is bound to
change p ( p ) by 1, thus p ( , d ) = p ( p ) f 1, and (6.136) is fulfilled. Q.E.D.