Generalized Dimer States

We present a new class of variational wavefunctions that can be used to investigate quantum antiferromagnetic systems. The states are a natural generalization of the nearest-neighbour dimer phases which have been thoroughly studied in the literature. We describe a one-dimensional class of total-spin-singlet wavefunctions, which include as special cases the two nearest-neighbour dimer phases and the exact solution to the total-spin-two projector Hamiltonian. These different solutions are 'smoothly' interpolated by a range of singlets with short-range correlations. Although the states have only short-range order, we can obtain over 98% of the ground-state energy of the nearest-neighbour Heisenberg model. We apply our basis to the J1-J2 Heisenberg model and the single hole in the t1-t2 infinite-U Hubbard model, successfully predicting the behaviour observed in finite-size scaling calculations.