Excited states by analytic continuation of TBA equations Original Research Article

We suggest an approach to the problem of finding integral equations for the excited states of an integrable model, starting from the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations for its ground state. The idea relies on analytic continuation through complex values of the coupling constant, and an analysis of the monodromies that the equations and their solutions undergo. For the scaling Lee-Yang model, we find equations in this way for the one- and two-particle states in the spin-zero sector, and suggest various generalisations. Numerical results show excellent agreement with the truncated conformal space approach, and we also treat some of the ultraviolet and infrared asymptotics analytically.