After reviewing the concept of vison excitations in
Z2 dimer liquids, we study the liquid-crystal transition of the quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice by means of a semiclassical spin-wave approximation to the dispersion of visons in the context of a ``soft-dimer'' version of the model. This approach captures some important qualitative features of the transition: continuous nature of the transition, linear dispersion at the critical point, and $\sqrt{12}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}\sqrt{12}$ symmetry-breaking pattern. In a second part, we present a variational calculation of the vison dispersion relation at the Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) point, which reproduces the qualitative shape of the dispersion relation and the order of magnitude of the gap. This approach provides a simple but reliable approximation of the vison wave functions at the RK point.
We study vison excitations in a quantum dimer model interpolating between the Rokhsar-Kivelson models on the square and triangular lattices. In the square-lattice case, the model is known to be critical and characterized by U (1) topological quantum numbers. Introducing diagonal dimers brings the model to a Z 2 resonating-valence-bond phase. We study variationally the emergence of vison excitations at low concentration of diagonal dimers, close to the critical point. We find that, in this regime, vison excitations are large in size and their structure resembles vortices in type-II superconductors.
We determine the dynamical dimer correlation functions of quantum dimer models at the Rokhsar–Kivelson point on the bipartite square and cubic lattices and the non-bipartite triangular lattice. On the basis of an algorithmic idea by Henley, we simulate a stochastic process of classical dimer configurations in continuous time and perform a stochastic analytical continuation to obtain the dynamical correlations in momentum space and the frequency domain. This approach allows us to observe directly the dispersion relations and the evolution of the spectral intensity within the Brillouin zone beyond the single-mode approximation. On the square lattice, we confirm analytical predictions related to soft modes close to the wavevectors (π,π) and (π,0) and further reveal the existence of shadow bands close to the wavevector (0,0). On the cubic lattice the spectrum is also gapless but here only a single soft mode at (π,π,π) is found, as predicted by the single-mode approximation. The soft mode has a quadratic dispersion at very long wavelength, but crosses over to a linear behavior very rapidly. We believe this to be the remnant of the linearly dispersing 'photon' of the Coulomb phase. Finally the triangular lattice is in a fully gapped liquid phase where the bottom of the dimer spectrum exhibits a rich structure. At the M point the gap is minimal and the spectral response is dominated by a sharp quasiparticle peak. On the other hand, at the X point the spectral function is much broader. We sketch a possible explanation based on the crossing of the coherent dimer excitations into the two-vison continuum.
We show that the liquid-to-crystal quantum phase transition in the Rokhsar-Kivelson dimer model on the two-dimensional triangular lattice occurs as a condensation of vortexlike excitations called ``visons.'' This conclusion is drawn from numerical studies of the vison spectrum in the liquid phase by using the Green's function Monte Carlo method. We find that visons remain the lowest excitation throughout the liquid phase and that their gap decreases continuously to zero at the phase transition. The nature of the crystal phase and the second order of the phase transition are in agreement with an earlier prediction of Moessner and Sondhi [Phys. Rev. B 63, 224401 (2001)].
A family of models is proposed to describe the motion of holes in a fluctuating quantum dimer background on the square lattice. Following Castelnovo et al. [Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 318, 316 (2005)], a generalized Rokhsar-Kivelson Hamiltonian at finite doping which can be mapped on a doped interacting classical dimer model is constructed. A simple physical extension of this model is also considered. Using numerical computations and simple considerations based on the above exact mapping, we determine the phase diagram of the model showing a number of quantum phases typical of a doped Mott insulator. The two-hole correlation function generically exhibits short-range or long-range algebraic correlations in the solid (columnar) and liquid (critical) phases of the model, respectively. Evidence for an extended region of a doped valence bond solid phase exhibiting holon pairing but no phase separation is given. In contrast, we show that hole deconfinement occurs in the staggered dimer phase.
We consider a family of generalized Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) Hamiltonians, which are reverse-engineered to have an arbitrary edge-weighted superposition of dimer coverings as their exact ground state at the RK point. We focus on a quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice, with doubly periodic edge weights. For simplicity we consider a
2×1 periodic model in which all weights are set to one except for a tunable horizontal edge weight labeled
α. We analytically show that the model exhibits a continuous quantum phase transition at
α=3, changing from a topological
Z2 quantum spin liquid (
α<3) to a columnar ordered state (
α>3). The dimer-dimer correlator decays exponentially on both sides of the transition with the correlation length
ξ∝1/∣α−3∣ and as a power-law at criticality. The vison correlator exhibits an exponential decay in the spin liquid phase, but becomes a constant in the ordered phase, which we explain in terms of loop statistics of the double-dimer model. Using finite-size scaling of the vison correlator, we extract critical exponents consistent with the 2D Ising universality class. Additionally, we analytically show that the topological Rényi entropy of order
∞ (topological min-entropy) changes from
log2 for the quantum spin liquid phase
α<3, to
0 for the ordered phase
α>3, thereby analytically confirming the topological nature of the phase transition.