Spin transport properties in Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chains: Spin current induced by twisted boundary magnetic fields

Spin transport properties of the one-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin systems for both S=1/2 and S=1 are studied by applying twisted boundary magnetic field. The spin current displays significantly different behavior of the spin transport properties between S=1/2 and S=1 cases. For the spin-half case, a London equation for the current and the detection of an alternating electric field are proposed for the linear response regime. The correlation functions reveal the spiral nature of spin configuration for both ground state and the spinon excitations. For the spin-one chain otherwise, a kink generated in the ground state for the size is larger than the correlation length, leading to an exponential dependence of spin current with respect to the chains length. The midgap state emerges from the degenerate ground state even for small boundary fields.