Opening of the Haldane Gap in Anisotropic Two- and Four-Leg Spin Ladders

We study the opening of the Haldane gap in two-leg and four-leg anisotropic spin ladders using bosonization and renormalization group methods, and we determine the phase diagram as a function of the interchain coupling and the relative anisotropy. It is found that the opening of the Haldane gap is qualitatively different for the two cases considered. For the two-leg ladder the Haldane gap opens for arbitrarily small interchain coupling, independent of the relative anisotropy, and the Haldane phase exists in a large region of parameter space. For the four-leg ladder the opening of the Haldane gap is strongly dependent on both the interchain coupling as well as the relative anisotropy, and the Haldane phase exists only in a narrow region about the isotropic antiferromagnet.