Surface free energy of the open XXZ spin-1/2 chain

We study the boundary free energy of the XXZ spin-$\tf{1}{2}$ chain subject to diagonal boundary fields. We first show that the representation for its finite Trotter number approximant obtained by Bortz, Frahm and Göhmann is related to the partition function of the six-vertex model with reflecting ends. Building on the Tsuchiya determinant representation for the latter quantity we are able to take the infinite Trotter number limit. This yields a representation for the surface free energy which involves the solution of the non-linear integral equation that governs the thermodynamics of the XXZ spin-1/2 chain subject to periodic boundary conditions. We show that this integral representation allows one to extract the low-$T$ asymptotic behavior of the boundary magnetization at finite external magnetic field on the one hand and numerically plot this function on the other hand.

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