Matrix product wave function of the ground state and elementary excitations in the spin- 12 chain

We present a variational matrix product state (vMPS) for the ground state of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model. The MPS effectively organizes the various dimer configurations, in faithful reflection of the resonating valence bond picture of the spin liquid, with the energy only 0.024% higher than the exact value given by Bethe ansatz. Building on the ground-state vMPS, the one-spin wave function is constructed in a simple manner with the dispersion that matches well with the exact spectrum. The vMPS scheme is applied to the family of Hamiltonian extrapolating between the Heisenberg model and the Majumdar-Ghosh model.