Classical spin dynamics based on SU ( N ) coherent states

We introduce a classical limit of the dynamics of quantum spin systems based on coherent states of $\mathrm{SU}(N)$, where $N$ is the dimension of the local Hilbert space. This approach, which generalizes the well-known Landau-Lifshitz dynamics from SU(2) to $\mathrm{SU}(N)$, provides a better approximation to the exact quantum dynamics for a large class of realistic spin Hamiltonians, including $S\ensuremath{\ge}1$ systems with large single-ion anisotropy and weakly coupled multispin units, such as dimers or trimers. We illustrate this idea by comparing the spin structure factors of a single-ion $S=1$ model that are obtained with the SU(2) and SU(3) classical spin dynamics against the exact solution.