We use perturbative series expansions about a staggered dimerized ground state to compute the ground state energy, triplet excitation spectra and spectral weight for a one-dimensional model in which each site has an $S=\case 1/2$ spin ${ \bf S}_i$ and a pseudospin ${ \bf T}_i$, representing a doubly degenerate orbital. An explicit dimerization is introduced to allow study of the confinement of spinon excitations. The elementary triplet represents a bound state of two spinons, and is stable over much of the Brillouine zone. A special line is found in the gapped spin-liquid phase, on which the triplet excitation is dispersionless. The formation of triplet bound states is also investigated.
Categories: cond-mat.str-el cond-mat.stat-mech