We study the spin-(1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on an infinite square lattice. The calculational scheme known as ‘‘paired-phonon analysis’’ developed for strongly correlated quantum fluids is extended to a ‘‘paired-magnon analysis’’ to study quantum antiferromagnets. We define a complete and orthonormal set of multimagnon states and calculate the matrix elements of the Hamiltonian using a separability approximation. Our results obtained by diagonalizing the Hamiltonian matrix analytically are very similar to those obtained in spin-wave theory. We obtain -0.3290, for the ground-state energy per bond in units of the antiferromagnetic coupling and 0.303 for the ground-state staggered magnetization. These results compare well with the best-known estimates -0.334±0.001 and 0.313, respectively. We derive the analytic form of the ground-state wave function in this approximation and find it to be of the same form as that assumed by Marshall in his variational studies.. The zero-point motion of long-wavelength excitations (spin waves) in the model, however, reflects a long-range tail in our wave function. We discuss the separability approximation by giving quantitative arguments which justify its validity.

• Received 8 March 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.40.4904