Chiral coordinate Bethe ansatz for phantom eigenstates in the open XXZ spin-$\frac12$ chain

Abstract

We construct the coordinate Bethe ansatz for all eigenstates of the open spin-$\frac12$ XXZ chain that fulfill the phantom roots criterion (PRC). Under the PRC, the Hilbert space splits into two invariant subspaces and there are two sets of homogeneous Bethe ansatz equations (BAE) to characterize the subspaces in each case. We propose two sets of vectors with chiral shocks to span the invariant subspaces and expand the corresponding eigenstates. All the vectors are factorized and have symmetrical and simple structures. Using several simple cases as examples, we present the core elements of our generalized coordinate Bethe ansatz method. The eigenstates are expanded in our generating set and show clear chirality and certain symmetry properties. The bulk scattering matrices, the reflection matrices on the two boundaries and the BAE are obtained, which demonstrates the agreement with other approaches. Some hypotheses are formulated for the generalization of our approach.