Thermodynamic Bethe ansatz for the subleading magnetic perturbation of the tricritical Ising model

We give further support to Smirnov's conjecture on the exact kink S-matrix for the massive quantum field theory describing the integrable perturbation of the c = 0.7 minimal conformal field theory (known to describe the tricritical Ising model) by the operator φ_2,1. This operator has conformal dimensions (7/16, 7/16) and is identified with the subleading magnetic operator of the tricritical Ising model. In this paper we apply the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA) approach to the kink scattering theory by explicitly utilising its relationship with the solvable lattice hard hexagon model. Analytically examining the ultraviolet scaling limit we recover the expected central charge c = 0.7 of the tricritical Ising model. We also compare numerical values for the ground state energy of the finite-size system obtained from the TBA equations with the results obtained by the truncated conformal space approach and conformal perturbation theory.