We study a generalized quantum hard-core dimer model on the square and honeycomb lattices, allowing for first and second neighbor dimers. At generalized Rokhsar-Kivelson points, the exact ground states can be constructed, and ground-state correlation functions can be equated to those of interacting (1+1)-dimensional Grassmann fields. When the concentration of second neighbor dimers is small, the ground-state correlations are shown to be short ranged corresponding to a (gaped) spin liquid phase. On a 2-torus, the ground states exhibit fourfold topological degeneracy. On a finite cylinder we have found a dramatic even-odd effect depending on the circumference and propose that this can be used as a numerical diagnostic of gapped spin-liquid phases, more generally.
We construct a generalized quantum dimer model on two-dimensional nonbipartite lattices, including the triangular lattice, the star lattice, and the kagome lattice. At the Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) point, we obtain its exact ground states that are shown to be a fully gapped quantum spin liquid with the double-semion topological order. The ground-state wave function of such a model at the RK point is a superposition of dimer configurations with a nonlocal sign structure determined by counting the number of loops in the transition graph. We explicitly demonstrate the double-semion topological order in the ground states by showing the semionic statistics of monomer excitations. We also discuss possible implications of such double-semion resonating valence bond states to candidate quantum spin-liquid systems discovered experimentally and numerically in the past few years.
We introduce the quantum dimer-pentamer model (QDPM) on the square lattice. This model is a generalization of the square-lattice quantum dimer model as its configuration space comprises fully packed hard-core dimer coverings as well as dimer configurations containing pentamers, where four dimers touch a vertex. Thus in the QDPM, the fully packed, hard-core constraint of the quantum dimer model is relaxed such that the local dimer number at each vertex is fixed modulo 3, resulting in an exact local
Z3 gauge symmetry. We construct a local Hamiltonian for which the Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) equal superposition state is the exact ground state and has a ninefold topological degeneracy on the torus. Using Monte Carlo calculations, we find no spontaneous symmetry breaking in the RK wave function and that its dimer-dimer correlation function decays exponentially. By doping the QDPM RK state with a pair of monomers, we demonstrate that
Z3 electric charges are deconfined. Additionally, we introduce a
Z3 magnetic string operator that we find decays exponentially and shows no signatures of magnetic vortex condensation. These numerical results suggest that the ground state of the QDPM is a dimer liquid with
Z3 topological order.
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.
We derive exact results for close-packed dimers on the triangular kagome lattice (TKL), formed by inserting triangles into the triangles of the kagome lattice. Because the TKL is a nonbipartite lattice, dimer-dimer correlations are short ranged so that the ground state at the Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) point of the corresponding quantum dimer model on the same lattice is a short-ranged spin liquid. Using the Pfaffian method, we derive an exact form for the free energy, and we find that the entropy is
31ln 2 per site, regardless of the weights of the bonds. The occupation probability of every bond is
41 in the case of equal weights on every bond. Similar to the case of lattices formed by corner-sharing triangles (such as the kagome and squagome lattices), we find that the dimer-dimer correlation function is identically zero beyond a certain (short) distance. We find in addition that monomers are deconfined on the TKL, indicating that there is a short-ranged spin liquid phase at the RK point. We also find exact results for the ground-state energy of the classical Heisenberg model. The ground state can be ferromagnetic, ferrimagnetic, locally coplanar, or locally canted, depending on the couplings. From the dimer model and the classical spin model, we derive upper bounds on the ground-state energy of the quantum Heisenberg model on the TKL.
We perform highly accurate density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations to investigate the ground-state properties of the spin-
1/2 antiferromagnetic square lattice Heisenberg
J1-
J2 model. Based on studies of numerous long cylinders with circumferences of up to 14 lattice spacings, we obtain strong evidence for a topological quantum spin liquid state in the region $0.41\ensuremath{\le}{J}_{2}/{J}_{1}\ensuremath{\le}0.62$, separating conventional N\'eel and striped antiferromagnetic states for smaller and larger
J2/J1, respectively. The quantum spin liquid is characterized numerically by the absence of magnetic or valence bond solid order, and nonzero singlet and triplet energy gaps. Furthermore, we positively identify its topological nature by measuring a nonzero topological entanglement entropy $\ensuremath{\gamma}=0.70\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02$, extremely close to $\ensuremath{\gamma}=\mathrm{ln}(2)\ensuremath{\approx}0.69$ (expected for a
Z2 quantum spin liquid) and a nontrivial finite size dimerization effect depending upon the parity of the circumference of the cylinder. We also point out that a valence bond solid, and indeed any discrete symmetry breaking state, would be expected to show a constant correction to the entanglement entropy of opposite sign to the topological entanglement entropy.
We consider the spin-
1/2 Hamiltonians proposed by Cano and Fendley [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 067205 (2010)], which were built to promote the well-known Rokshar-Kivelson (RK) point of quantum dimer models to spin-
1/2 wave functions. We first show that these models, besides the exact degeneracy of RK point, support gapless spinless excitations as well as a spin gap in the thermodynamic limit, signatures of an unusual spin liquid. We then extend the original construction to create a continuous family of SU(2) invariant spin models that reproduces the phase diagram of the quantum dimer model and, in particular, show explicit evidences for existence of columnar and staggered phases. The original models thus appear as multicritical points in an extended phase diagram. Our results are based on the use of a combination of numerical exact simulations and analytical mapping to effective generalized quantum dimer models.