Inspired by the recent discovery of a new instability towards a chiral phase of the classical Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice, we propose a specific chiral spin liquid that reconciles different, well-established results concerning both the classical and quantum models. This proposal is analyzed in an extended mean-field Schwinger boson framework encompassing time reversal symmetry breaking phases, which allows both a classical and a quantum phase description. At low temperatures, we find that quantum fluctuations favor this chiral phase, which is stable against small perturbations of second- and third-neighbor interactions. For spin-1/2, this phase may be, beyond the mean field, a chiral gapped spin liquid. Such a phase is consistent with the density matrix renormalization group results of Yan et al. [Science 332, 1173 (2011)]. Mysterious features of the low-lying excitations of exact diagonalization spectra also find an explanation in this framework. Moreover, thermal fluctuations compete with quantum ones and induce a transition from this flux phase to a planar zero flux phase at a nonzero value of the renormalized temperature (T/S2), reconciling these results with those obtained for the classical system.
Inspired by the recent discovery of a new instability towards a chiral phase of the classical Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice, we propose a specific chiral spin liquid that reconciles different, well-established results concerning both the classical and quantum models. This proposal is analyzed in an extended mean-field Schwinger boson framework encompassing time reversal symmetry breaking phases, which allows both a classical and a quantum phase description. At low temperatures, we find that quantum fluctuations favor this chiral phase, which is stable against small perturbations of second- and third-neighbor interactions. For spin-1/2, this phase may be, beyond the mean field, a chiral gapped spin liquid. Such a phase is consistent with the density matrix renormalization group results of Yan et al. [Science 332, 1173 (2011)]. Mysterious features of the low-lying excitations of exact diagonalization spectra also find an explanation in this framework. Moreover, thermal fluctuations compete with quantum ones and induce a transition from this flux phase to a planar zero flux phase at a nonzero value of the renormalized temperature (T/S2), reconciling these results with those obtained for the classical system.
Due to strong geometric frustration and quantum fluctuation, the S=1/2 quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice has long been considered as an ideal platform to realize a spin liquid (SL), a phase exhibiting fractionalized excitations without any symmetry breaking. A recent numerical study (Yan et al., e-print arXiv:1011.6114) of the Heisenberg S=1/2,kagome lattice model (HKLM) shows, in contrast to earlier results, that the ground state is a singlet-gapped SL with signatures of Z2 topological order. Motivated by this numerical discovery, we use the projective symmetry group to classify all 20 possible Schwinger fermion mean-field states of Z2 SLs on the kagome lattice. Among them we found only one gapped Z2 SL (which we call the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}[0,\ensuremath{\pi}]\ensuremath{\beta}$ state) in the neighborhood of the U(1) Dirac SL state. Since its parent state, i.e., the U(1) Dirac SL, was found [Ran et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 117205 (2007)] to be the lowest among many other candidate U(1) SLs, including the uniform resonating-valence-bond states, we propose this ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}[0,\ensuremath{\pi}]\ensuremath{\beta}$ state to be the numerically discovered SL ground state of the HKLM.
Recent years have seen the discovery of a chiral spin liquid state - a bosonic analogue of a fractional Quantum Hall state first put forward by Kalmeyer and Laughlin in 1987 - in several deformations of the Heisenberg model on the Kagome lattice. Here, we apply state-of-the-art numerical techniques to one such model, where breaking of the time-reversal symmetry drives the system into the chiral phase. Our methods allow us to obtain explicit matrix-product state representations of the low-lying excitations of the chiral spin liquid state, including the topologically non-trivial semionic excitation. We characterize these excitations and study their energetics as the model is tuned towards a topological phase transition.
We calculate dynamical spin structure factors for gapped chiral spin liquid states in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice using Schwinger-boson mean-field theory. In contrast to static (equal-time) structure factors, the dynamical structure factor shows clear signatures of time-reversal symmetry breaking for chiral spin liquid states. In particular, momentum inversion $\mathbit{k}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{-}\mathbit{k}$ symmetry as well as the sixfold rotation symmetry around the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$ point are lost. We highlight other interesting features, such as a relatively flat onset of the two-spinon continuum for the cuboc1 state. Our work is based on the projective symmetry group classification of time-reversal symmetry breaking Schwinger-boson mean-field states by Messio, Lhuillier, and Misguich.
We study the quantum phase diagram of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice with first-, second-, and third-neighbor interactions J1,J2, and J3 by means of density matrix renormalization group. For small J2 and J3, this model sustains a time-reversal invariant quantum spin-liquid phase. With increasing J2 and J3, we find in addition a q=(0,0) N\'eel phase, a chiral spin-liquid phase, an apparent valence-bond crystal phase, and a complex noncoplanar magnetically ordered state with spins forming the vertices of a cuboctahedron known as a cuboc1 phase. Both the chiral spin liquid and cuboc1 phase break time-reversal symmetry in the sense of spontaneous scalar spin chirality. We show that the chiralities in the chiral spin liquid and cuboc1 are distinct, and that these two states are separated by a strong first-order phase transition. The transitions from the chiral spin liquid to both the q=(0,0) phase and to time-reversal symmetric spin liquid, however, are consistent with continuous quantum phase transitions.
Due to strong geometric frustration and quantum fluctuation, the S = 1/2 quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice has long been considered as an ideal platform to realize a spin liquid (SL), a phase exhibiting fractionalized excitations without any symmetry breaking. A recent numerical study (Yan et al., e-print arXiv:1011.6114) of the Heisenberg S = 1/2, kagome lattice model (HKLM) shows, in contrast to earlier results, that the ground state is a singlet-gapped SL with signatures of Z2 [Z subscript 2] topological order. Motivated by this numerical discovery, we use the projective symmetry group to classify all 20 possible Schwinger fermion mean-field states of Z2 [Z subscript 2] SLs on the kagome lattice. Among them we found only one gapped Z2 [Z subscript 2] SL (which we call the Z2[0,π]β [Z subscript 2 [0,pi] Beta] state) in the neighborhood of the U(1) Dirac SL state. Since its parent state, i.e., the U(1) Dirac SL, was found [Ran et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 117205 (2007)] to be the lowest among many other candidate U(1) SLs, including the uniform resonating-valence-bond states, we propose this Z2[0,π]β [Z subscript 2 [0,pi] Beta] state to be the numerically discovered SL ground state of the HKLM.
By using the density matrix renormalization group, we study the spin-liquid phases of spin-1/2 XXZ kagome antiferromagnets. We find that the emergence of spin liquid phase does not depend on the anisotropy of the XXZ interaction. In particular, the two extreme limits---Ising (strong Sz interaction) and XY (zero Sz interaction)---host the same spin-liquid phases as the isotropic Heisenberg model. Both the time-reversal-invariant spin liquid and the chiral spin liquid with spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking are obtained. We show they evolve continuously into each other by tuning the second- and third-neighbor interactions. To understand the continuous phase transition between these two spin liquids, we construct a phenomenological theory, and propose the double-semion spin liquid as the candidate ground state of nearest-neighbor XXZ kagome antiferromagnets, including the most studied nearest-neighbor spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model.