Field-induced gap in a quantum spin-1/2 chain in a strong magnetic field

Magnetic excitations in copper pyrimidine dinitrate, a spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic chain with alternating g-tensor and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions that exhibits a field-induced spin gap, are probed by means of pulsed-field electron-spin-resonance spectroscopy. In particular, we report on a minimum of the gap in the vicinity of the saturation field H-sat = 48.5 T associated with a transition from the sine-Gordon region (with soliton-breather elementary excitations) to a spin-polarized state (with magnon excitations). This interpretation is fully confirmed by the quantitative agreement over the entire field range of the experimental data with the density matrix renormalization group calculations for a spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with a staggered transverse field.