The Haldane Energy Gap of A Doped Linear-Chain Heisenberg Antiferromagnet

Using the valence-bond-solid (VBS) approach and the Schwinger boson mean field approximation, we study the dependence of the Haldane gap of a spin-1 linear chain Heisenberg antiferromagnet on impurity doping with different spins. The impurity spins affect the singlet pairing order parameter $\Delta $ and the constraint factor $\lambda$. As a result, the Haldane gap is reduced by a factor $ \sim n_i^{2/3}$, with $n_i$ as the impurity concentration, and eventually collapses at $n_i \sim 1/\xi$ with $\xi$ as the VBS correlation length. This theoretical prediction can be verified by neutron scattering experiments.