The Haldane conjecture predicts a positive spectral gap for integer-spin antiferromagnetic Heisenberg
chains, contrasting with half-integer-spin behavior.
For the spin-one even periodic formulation, let be the irreducible self-adjoint
spin-one matrices with cyclic commutator
relations
and
. With coupling one, put
where
on
. The conjectured gap is a positive lower limit of the difference between the lowest and
next distinct energies as even
.