  The material copper pyrimidine dinitrate (Cu-PM) is a quasi-one-dimensional
spin system described by the spin-1/2 XXZ Heisenberg antiferromagnet with
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Based on numerical results obtained by the
density-matrix renormalization group, exact diagonalization, and accompanying
electron spin resonance (ESR) experiments we revisit the spin dynamics of this
compound in an applied magnetic field. Our calculations for momentum and
frequency-resolved dynamical quantities give direct access to the intensity of
the elementary excitations at both zero and finite temperature. This allows us
to study the system beyond the low-energy description by the quantum
sine-Gordon model. We find a deviation from the Lorentz invariant dispersion
for the single-soliton resonance. Furthermore, our calculations only confirm
the presence of the strongest boundary bound state previously derived from a
boundary sine-Gordon field theory, while composite boundary-bulk excitations
have too low intensities to be observable. Upon increasing the temperature, we
find a temperature-induced crossover of the soliton and the emergence of new
features, such as interbreather transitions. The latter observation is
confirmed by our ESR experiments on Cu-PM over a wide range of the applied
field.
