Thermodynamics of the random antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain

Abstract The random exchange antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-1 chain at finite temperature is studied using a renormalization-group method. We follow the evolution of the bond probability distribution and calculate the free energy of the system. The spurious results found for the free energy shows that the standard renormalization group approach used for spin- 1 2 chains does not guarantee the existence of the random singlet phase in the random spin-1 chain even in the presence of strong disorder.