Quantum crystals and spin chains Original Research Article

In this article, we discuss the quantum version of the melting crystal corner in one, two, and three dimensions, generalizing the treatment for the quantum dimer model. Using a mapping to spin chains we find that the two-dimensional case (growth of random partitions) is integrable and leads directly to the Hamiltonian of the Heisenberg XXZ ferromagnet. The three-dimensional case of the melting crystal corner is described in terms of a system of coupled XXZ spin chains. We give a conjecture for its mass gap and analyze the system numerically.