Longitudinal magnons in large-$S$ easy-axis magnets

Abstract: Longitudinal magnons are a novel class of multipolar quantum excitations in magnetic materials with large spins $S\ge 1$ and strong easy-axis anisotropy. These excitations have angular momentum $S^z = \pm 2S$ and can be viewed as propagating spin reversals. We study a simple model for longitudinal magnons: a square lattice of spins $S$ coupled by the neareast-neighbor exchange, ferro- or antiferromagnetic, in the presence of a single-ion anisotropy. We calculate the excitation spectra in the large-$D$ limit by using a strong-coupling expansion. In the specific case of $S=1$ we compare the results for several analytical approaches that include the linked-cluster expansion, the multiboson representation of spin operators, and also, for a ferromagnetic ground state, the exact solution of the two-particle bound states. Among these different approaches, the multiboson theory gives the decay rate of longitudinal magnons and describes the evolution of the excitation spectra from strong to moderate and weak anisotropy.