Statics and dynamics of weakly coupled antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 ladders in a magnetic field

We investigate weakly coupled spin-1/2 ladders in a magnetic field. The work is motivated by recent experiments on the compound (C5H12N)2CuBr4 (BPCB). We use a combination of numerical and analytical methods, in particular the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique, to explore the phase diagram and the excitation spectra of such a system. We give detailed results on the temperature dependence of the magnetization and the specific heat, and the magnetic field dependence of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation rate of single ladders. For coupled ladders, treating the weak interladder coupling within a mean-field or quantum Monte Carlo approach, we compute the transit…