ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ON THE THERMODYNAMICS OF QUANTUM SPIN SYSTEMS

A magnetic system is usually described in terms of the exchange coupling between neighboring spins lying on the sites of a given lattice. Our goal here is to account for the unavoidable quantum effects due to the further coupling with the vibrations of the ions constituting the lattice. A Caldeira-Leggett scheme allows one to treat such effects through the analysis of the associated influence action, obtained after tracing-out the phonons. In a physically sound model, it turns out that one must deal with an environmental coupling which is nonlinear in the system's variables. The corresponding path integral can be dealt with by suitably extending the pure-quantum self-consistent harmonic approximation. In this way one can obtain extended phase diagrams for magnetic phase transitions, accounting for the environmental interaction.