Abstract
We study the effects of weak off-diagonal disorder on Peierls systems with a doubly degenerate ground state. We show that for these systems disorder in the electron hopping amplitudes induces a finitedensity ofsolitons in the minimal-energy lattice configuration of a single chain. These disorder-induced dimerization kinks are neutral and have spin 1/2. Using a continuum model for the Peierls chain and treating the lattice classically, we analytically calculate the average free energy and density of kinks. We compare these results to numerical calculations for a discrete model and discuss the implications of the kinks for theoptical and magnetic properties of the conjugated polymer trans-polyacetylene.
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Leibniz-HKI-Autor*innen
Identifier
doi: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.57.2861