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arXiv:1301.4492 · Physical Review Letters

Constructing a Gapless Spin-Liquid State for the Spin- 1/2 J1−J2 Heisenberg Model on a Square Lattice

Ling Wang, Didier Poilblanc, Zheng‐Cheng Gu, Xiao-Gang Wen, Frank Verstraete

Published Jul 17, 2013• 136 citations
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Abstract

We construct a class of projected entangled pair states which is exactly the resonating valence bond wave functions endowed with both short range and long range valence bonds. With an energetically preferred resonating valence bond pattern, the wave function is simplified to live in a one-parameter variational space. We tune this variational parameter to minimize the energy for the frustrated spin-1/2 J(1)-J(2) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the square lattice. Taking a cylindrical geometry, we are able to construct four topological sectors with an even or odd number of fluxes penetrating the cylinder and an even or odd number of spinons on the boundary. The energy splitting in different topological sectors is exponentially small with the cylinder perimeter. We find a power law decay of the dimer correlation function on a torus, and a lnL correction to the entanglement entropy, indicating a gapless spin-liquid phase at the optimum parameter.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.111.037202

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We construct a class of projected entangled pair states which is exactly the resonating valence bond wave functions endowed with both short range and long range valence bonds. With an energetically preferred resonating valence bond pattern, the wave function is simplified to live in a one-parameter variational space. We tune this variational parameter to minimize the energy for the frustrated spin-1/2 J(1)-J(2) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the square lattice. Taking a cylindrical geometry, we are able to construct four topological sectors with an even or odd number of fluxes penetrating the cylinder and an even or odd number of spinons on the boundary. The energy splitting in different topological sectors is exponentially small with the cylinder perimeter. We find a power law decay of the dimer correlation function on a torus, and a lnL correction to the entanglement entropy, indicating a gapless spin-liquid phase at the optimum parameter.
We construct a class of projected entangled pair states which is exactly the resonating valence bond wave functions endowed with both short range and long range valence bonds. With an energetically preferred resonating valence bond pattern, the wave function is simplified to live in a one-parameter variational space. We tune this variational parameter to minimize the energy for the frustrated spin-1/2 J[subscript 1]-J[subscript 2] antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the square lattice. Taking a cylindrical geometry, we are able to construct four topological sectors with an even or odd number of fluxes penetrating the cylinder and an even or odd number of spinons on the boundary. The energy splitting in different topological sectors is exponentially small with the cylinder perimeter. We find a power law decay of the dimer correlation function on a torus, and a ln⁡L correction to the entanglement entropy, indicating a gapless spin-liquid phase at the optimum parameter.
Gapped Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ spin liquids have been proposed as candidates for the ground state of the S=1/2S=1/2S=1/2 quantum antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice. We extend the use of projected entangled pair states to construct (on the cylinder) resonating valence bond (RVB) states including both nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor singlet bonds. Our ansatz---dubbed ``simplex spin liquid''---allows for an asymmetry between the two types of triangles (of order 22%--3%2 in the energy density after optimization) leading to the breaking of inversion symmetry. We show that the topological Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ structure is still preserved and, by considering the presence or the absence of spinon and vison lines along an infinite cylinder, we explicitly construct four orthogonal RVB minimally entangled states. The spinon and vison coherence lengths are extracted from a finite size scaling with regard to the cylinder perimeter of the energy splittings of the four sectors and are found to be of the order of the lattice spacing. The entanglement spectrum of a partitioned (infinite) cylinder is found to be gapless, suggesting the occurrence, on a cylinder with real open boundaries, of gapless edge modes formally similar to Luttinger liquid (nonchiral) spin and charge modes. When inversion symmetry is spontaneously broken, the RVB spin liquid exhibits an extra Ising degeneracy, which might have been observed in recent exact diagonalization studies.
We study the ground-state phase diagram of the spin-1/21/21/2${J}_{1}\ensuremath{-}{J}_{2}$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice with an accurate bosonic resonating-valence-bond (RVB) wave function. In contrast to the RVB ansatz based on Schwinger fermions, the representation based on Schwinger bosons, supplemented by a variational Monte Carlo technique enforcing the exact projection onto the physical subspace, is able to describe a fully gapped spin liquid in the strongly frustrated regime. In particular, a fully symmetric Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ spin liquid is stable between two antiferromagnetic phases; a continuous transition at J2=0.4J1{J}_{2}=0.4{J}_{1}J2​=0.4J1​, when the Marshall sign rule begins to be essentially violated, and a first-order transition around J2=0.6J1{J}_{2}=0.6{J}_{1}J2​=0.6J1​ are present. Most importantly, the triplet gap is found to have a nonmonotonic behavior, reaching a maximum around J2=0.51J1{J}_{2}=0.51{J}_{1}J2​=0.51J1​, when the lowest spinon excitation moves from the $\ensuremath{\Gamma}$ to the MMM point, i.e., $k=(\ensuremath{\pi},0)$.
We construct a short-range resonating-valence-bond (RVB) state on the ruby lattice, using projected entangled-pair states with bond dimension D=3D=3D=3. By introducing nonlocal moves to the dimer patterns on the torus, we distinguish four distinct sectors in the space of dimer coverings, which is a signature of the topological nature of the RVB wave function. Furthermore, by calculating the reduced density matrix of a bipartition of the RVB state on an infinite cylinder and exploring its entanglement entropy, we confirm the topological nature of the RVB wave function by obtaining a nonzero topological contribution, $\ensuremath{\gamma}=\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{ln}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}2$, consistent with that of a Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological quantum spin liquid. We also calculate the ground-state energy of the spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the ruby lattice and compare it with the RVB energy. Finally, we construct a quantum dimer model for the ruby lattice and discuss it as a possible parent Hamiltonian for the RVB wave function.
Investigation of the J1J_1J1​-J2J_2J2​ Heisenberg model on the triangular lattice: A study with projected entangled-pair states
The nature of the quantum spin liquid (QSL) phase in the frustrated J1J_1J1​-J2J_2J2​ Heisenberg model on the triangular lattice remains an open and actively debated problem. In this work, we employ the infinite projected entangled-pair state (PEPS) to systematically investigate the model under different symmetry constraints. Our simulations reveal a direct transition from the 120∘120^\circ120∘ Néel state to a putative QSL at J2/J1≈0.08J_2/J_1\approx 0.08J2​/J1​≈0.08, signaled by the collapse of magnetic order. We further show that, through either an appropriate unitary rotation or spontaneous spin long-range order, the stripe antiferromagnetic phase can also be accurately captured within the infinite PEPS framework. A central focus of our study is the role played by the PEPS symmetry in approximating the QSL ground-state sandwiched between the two magnetic phases. We first found that a fully-symmetric topological Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ Resonating Valence Bond state, which can be written as a simple PEPS with bond dimension D=3D=3D=3, exhibits a reasonably good variational energy. Motivated by this finding, we have further constructed generic Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​-symmetric PEPS of larger bond dimension (up to D=7D=7D=7). We found that, under wavefunction optimization, spinons condense and, simultaneously, topological vison excitations get confined, hence precluding Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ topological order. This strongly indicates the gapless (or critical) nature of the QSL phase, which is most naturally consistent with a U(1) Dirac spin liquid scenario.
Topological chiral phases are ubiquitous in the physics of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Nonchiral topological spin liquids are also well known. Here, using the framework of projected entangled pair states (PEPS), we construct a family of chiral spin liquids on the square lattice, which are generalized spin-1/2 resonating valence bond (RVB) states obtained from deformed local tensors with d+idd+i\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}dd+id symmetry. On a cylinder, we construct four topological sectors with even or odd number of spinons on the boundary and even or odd number of (Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​) fluxes penetrating the cylinder, which, we argue, remain orthogonal in the limit of infinite perimeter. The analysis of the transfer matrix provides evidence of short-range (long-range) triplet (singlet) correlations as for the critical (nonchiral) RVB state. The entanglement spectrum exhibits chiral edge modes, which we confront to predictions of the conformal field theory, and the corresponding entanglement Hamiltonian is shown to be long-ranged.