A rigid commensurate host and a defect that switches: vacancies in the frustrated alternating spin-(1, 1/2) Heisenberg chain

Abstract: The alternating spin-$(1,\tfrac12)$ Heisenberg chain with a frustrating next-nearest-neighbor coupling $J_2$ loses its Lieb--Mattis moment through a discontinuous transition to a singlet whose nature was left open. Using an SU(2)-symmetric density-matrix renormalization group, in which the total spin is a quantum-number label, we identify that phase and follow a single vacancy through it. The total spin collapses directly from $S=L/4$ to $S=0$, with no partially polarized window. The singlet phase is critical: its singlet--triplet gap closes as $1/L$, its entanglement entropy grows logarithmically with a central charge $c\simeq1.8$, and its modulation wavevector, extrapolated from $L=80$ to $200$, is commensurate at $3π/4$ and independent of $J_2$ to $5\times10<sup>{-5}$. Removing the central $S=1$ site switches the ground state of the doped chain from a triplet to a singlet at $J_2<sup>{\ast}=0.3068(3)$, where the host shows no feature; the triplet is not bound to the vacancy but spread over one of the two segments it leaves. The transmission of correlations through the vacancy saturates at a finite value below $J_2<sup>{\ast}$, $T(\infty)=0.102(15)$ and $0.036(9)$ at $J_2=0.28$ and $0.30$, and the cut-chain law $T\propto L<sup>{-1}$ is excluded on both sides. We also show that the longitudinal correlator is not an observable in a triplet sector.