Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1509.08461 · Physical Review Letters

Haldane-Hubbard Mott Insulator: From Tetrahedral Spin Crystal to Chiral Spin Liquid

Ciarán Hickey, Łukasz Cincio, Zlatko Papić, Arun Paramekanti

Published Apr 1, 2016• 65 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Motivated by cold atom experiments on Chern insulators, we study the honeycomb lattice Haldane-Hubbard Mott insulator of spin-1/2 fermions using exact diagonalization and density matrix renormalization group methods. We show that this model exhibits various chiral magnetic orders including a wide regime of triple-Q tetrahedral order. Incorporating third-neighbor hopping frustrates and ultimately melts this tetrahedral spin crystal. From analyzing the low energy spectrum, many-body Chern numbers, entanglement spectra, and modular matrices, we identify the molten state as a chiral spin liquid (CSL) with gapped semion excitations. We formulate and study the Chern-Simons-Higgs field theory of the exotic CSL-to-tetrahedral spin crystallization transition.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.116.137202

Related papers

Competing chiral magnetic orders in the strongly correlated Haldane-Hubbard model

Arun Paramekanti, Ciarán Hickey, Pratik Rath

Motivated by experiments on ultracold atoms which have realized the Haldane model for a Chern insulator, we consider its strongly correlated Mott limit with spin-1/2 fermions. A slave rotor mean field theory suggests the appearance of gapped or gapless chiral spin liquid Mott insulators. To study competing magnetic orders, we consider the strong coupling effective spin Hamiltonian which includes chiral three-spin exchange. We obtain its classical phase diagram, uncovering various chiral magnetic orders including tetrahedral, cone, and noncoplanar spiral states which can compete with putative chiral quantum spin liquids. We study the effect of thermal fluctuations on these states, identifying crossovers in the spin chirality, and phase transitions associated with lattice symmetry breaking. We also discuss analogous effective spin Hamiltonians for correlated spin-1/2 bosons.

Bulletin of the American Physical Society•Jun 11, 2015•0 citations

Emergence of chiral spin liquids via quantum melting of noncoplanar magnetic orders

Ciarán Hickey, Łukasz Cincio, Zlatko Papić +1 more

Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are highly entangled states of quantum magnets which lie beyond the Landau paradigm of classifying phases of matter via broken symmetries. A physical route to arriving at QSLs is via frustration-induced quantum melting of ordered states such as valence bond crystals or magnetic orders. Here we show, using extensive exact diagonalization (ED) and density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) studies of concrete $SU(2)$ invariant spin models on honeycomb, triangular, and square lattices, that chiral spin liquids (CSLs) emerge as descendants of triple-$Q$ spin crystals with tetrahedral magnetic order and a large scalar spin chirality. Such ordered-to-CSL melting transitions may yield lattice realizations of effective Chern-Simons-Higgs field theories. Our work provides a distinct unifying perspective on the emergence of CSLs and suggests that materials with certain noncoplanar magnetic orders might provide a good starting point to search for CSLs.

arXiv:1705.05381•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Sep 11, 2017•46 citations

Competing chiral orders in the topological Haldane-Hubbard model of spin- 12 fermions and bosons

Ciarán Hickey, P. Rath, Arun Paramekanti

Motivated by experiments on ultracold atoms which have realized the Haldane model for a Chern insulator, we consider its strongly correlated Mott limit with spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ fermions. We find that slave rotor mean-field theory yields gapped or gapless chiral spin liquid Mott insulators. To study competing magnetic orders, we consider the strong coupling effective spin Hamiltonian which includes chiral three-spin exchange. We obtain its classical phase diagram, uncovering various chiral magnetic orders including tetrahedral, cone, and noncoplanar spiral states which can compete with putative chiral quantum spin liquids. We study the effect of thermal fluctuations on these states, identifying crossovers in the spin chirality, and phase transitions associated with lattice symmetry breaking. We also discuss analogous effective spin Hamiltonians for correlated spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ bosons. Finally, we point out possible experimental implications of our results for cold atom experiments.

arXiv:1501.01304•Physical Review B•Apr 13, 2015•36 citations

Chiral Spin Liquid Phase of the Triangular Lattice Hubbard Model: A Density Matrix Renormalization Group Study

Aaron Szasz, Johannes Motruk, Michael P. Zaletel +1 more

Motivated by experimental studies that have found signatures of a quantum spin liquid phase in organic crystals whose structure is well described by the two-dimensional triangular lattice, we study the Hubbard model on this lattice at half filling using the infinite-system density matrix renormalization group (iDMRG) method. On infinite cylinders with finite circumference, we identify an intermediate phase between observed metallic behavior at low interaction strength and Mott insulating spin-ordered behavior at strong interactions. Chiral ordering from spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry, a fractionally quantized spin Hall response, and characteristic level statistics in the entanglement spectrum in the intermediate phase provide strong evidence for the existence of a chiral spin liquid in the full two-dimensional limit of the model.

•Apr 1, 2020•50 citations

Four-Spin Terms and the Origin of the Chiral Spin Liquid in Mott Insulators on the Triangular Lattice

Tessa Cookmeyer, Johannes Motruk, Joel E. Moore

At strong repulsion, the triangular-lattice Hubbard model is described by s=1/2 spins with nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic Heisenberg interactions and exhibits conventional 120° order. Using the infinite density matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization, we study the effect of the additional four-spin interactions naturally generated from the underlying Mott-insulator physics of electrons as the repulsion decreases. Although these interactions have historically been connected with a gapless ground state with emergent spinon Fermi surface, we find that, at physically relevant parameters, they stabilize a chiral spin liquid (CSL) of Kalmeyer-Laughlin (KL) type, clarifying observations in recent studies of the Hubbard model. We then present a self-consistent solution based on a mean-field rewriting of the interaction to obtain a Hamiltonian with similarities to the parent Hamiltonian of the KL state, providing a physical understanding for the origin of the CSL.

arXiv:2103.07438•Physical Review Letters•Aug 19, 2021•77 citations

Quantum phase diagram and chiral spin liquid in the extended spin- 12 honeycomb XY model

Yixuan Huang, Xiaoyu Dong, D. N. Sheng +1 more

The frustrated XY model on the honeycomb lattice has drawn lots of attention because of the potential emergence of chiral spin liquid (CSL) with the increasing of frustrations or competing interactions. In this paper, we study the extended spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ XY model with nearest-neighbor $({J}_{1})$, and next-nearest-neighbor $({J}_{2})$ interactions in the presence of a three-spins chiral $({J}_{\ensuremath{\chi}})$ term using density matrix renormalization group methods. We obtain a quantum phase diagram with both conventionally ordered and topologically ordered phases. In particular, the long-sought Kalmeyer-Laughlin CSL is shown to emerge under a small ${J}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}$ perturbation due to the interplay of the magnetic frustration and chiral interactions. The CSL, which is a nonmagnetic phase, is identified by the scalar chiral order, the finite spin gap on a torus, and the chiral entanglement spectrum described by chiral $SU{(2)}_{1}$ conformal field theory.

arXiv:1912.11156•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Jan 19, 2021•13 citations
Motivated by cold atom experiments on Chern insulators, we study the honeycomb lattice Haldane-Hubbard Mott insulator of spin-1/2 fermions using exact diagonalization and density matrix renormalization group methods. We show that this model exhibits various chiral magnetic orders including a wide regime of triple-Q tetrahedral order. Incorporating third-neighbor hopping frustrates and ultimately melts this tetrahedral spin crystal. From analyzing the low energy spectrum, many-body Chern numbers, entanglement spectra, and modular matrices, we identify the molten state as a chiral spin liquid (CSL) with gapped semion excitations. We formulate and study the Chern-Simons-Higgs field theory of the exotic CSL-to-tetrahedral spin crystallization transition.
Motivated by experiments on ultracold atoms which have realized the Haldane model for a Chern insulator, we consider its strongly correlated Mott limit with spin-1/2 fermions. A slave rotor mean field theory suggests the appearance of gapped or gapless chiral spin liquid Mott insulators. To study competing magnetic orders, we consider the strong coupling effective spin Hamiltonian which includes chiral three-spin exchange. We obtain its classical phase diagram, uncovering various chiral magnetic orders including tetrahedral, cone, and noncoplanar spiral states which can compete with putative chiral quantum spin liquids. We study the effect of thermal fluctuations on these states, identifying crossovers in the spin chirality, and phase transitions associated with lattice symmetry breaking. We also discuss analogous effective spin Hamiltonians for correlated spin-1/2 bosons.
Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are highly entangled states of quantum magnets which lie beyond the Landau paradigm of classifying phases of matter via broken symmetries. A physical route to arriving at QSLs is via frustration-induced quantum melting of ordered states such as valence bond crystals or magnetic orders. Here we show, using extensive exact diagonalization (ED) and density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) studies of concrete SU(2)SU(2)SU(2) invariant spin models on honeycomb, triangular, and square lattices, that chiral spin liquids (CSLs) emerge as descendants of triple-QQQ spin crystals with tetrahedral magnetic order and a large scalar spin chirality. Such ordered-to-CSL melting transitions may yield lattice realizations of effective Chern-Simons-Higgs field theories. Our work provides a distinct unifying perspective on the emergence of CSLs and suggests that materials with certain noncoplanar magnetic orders might provide a good starting point to search for CSLs.
Motivated by experiments on ultracold atoms which have realized the Haldane model for a Chern insulator, we consider its strongly correlated Mott limit with spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ fermions. We find that slave rotor mean-field theory yields gapped or gapless chiral spin liquid Mott insulators. To study competing magnetic orders, we consider the strong coupling effective spin Hamiltonian which includes chiral three-spin exchange. We obtain its classical phase diagram, uncovering various chiral magnetic orders including tetrahedral, cone, and noncoplanar spiral states which can compete with putative chiral quantum spin liquids. We study the effect of thermal fluctuations on these states, identifying crossovers in the spin chirality, and phase transitions associated with lattice symmetry breaking. We also discuss analogous effective spin Hamiltonians for correlated spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ bosons. Finally, we point out possible experimental implications of our results for cold atom experiments.
Motivated by experimental studies that have found signatures of a quantum spin liquid phase in organic crystals whose structure is well described by the two-dimensional triangular lattice, we study the Hubbard model on this lattice at half filling using the infinite-system density matrix renormalization group (iDMRG) method. On infinite cylinders with finite circumference, we identify an intermediate phase between observed metallic behavior at low interaction strength and Mott insulating spin-ordered behavior at strong interactions. Chiral ordering from spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry, a fractionally quantized spin Hall response, and characteristic level statistics in the entanglement spectrum in the intermediate phase provide strong evidence for the existence of a chiral spin liquid in the full two-dimensional limit of the model.
At strong repulsion, the triangular-lattice Hubbard model is described by s=1/2 spins with nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic Heisenberg interactions and exhibits conventional 120° order. Using the infinite density matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization, we study the effect of the additional four-spin interactions naturally generated from the underlying Mott-insulator physics of electrons as the repulsion decreases. Although these interactions have historically been connected with a gapless ground state with emergent spinon Fermi surface, we find that, at physically relevant parameters, they stabilize a chiral spin liquid (CSL) of Kalmeyer-Laughlin (KL) type, clarifying observations in recent studies of the Hubbard model. We then present a self-consistent solution based on a mean-field rewriting of the interaction to obtain a Hamiltonian with similarities to the parent Hamiltonian of the KL state, providing a physical understanding for the origin of the CSL.
The frustrated XY model on the honeycomb lattice has drawn lots of attention because of the potential emergence of chiral spin liquid (CSL) with the increasing of frustrations or competing interactions. In this paper, we study the extended spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ XY model with nearest-neighbor (J1)({J}_{1})(J1​), and next-nearest-neighbor (J2)({J}_{2})(J2​) interactions in the presence of a three-spins chiral $({J}_{\ensuremath{\chi}})$ term using density matrix renormalization group methods. We obtain a quantum phase diagram with both conventionally ordered and topologically ordered phases. In particular, the long-sought Kalmeyer-Laughlin CSL is shown to emerge under a small ${J}_{\ensuremath{\chi}}$ perturbation due to the interplay of the magnetic frustration and chiral interactions. The CSL, which is a nonmagnetic phase, is identified by the scalar chiral order, the finite spin gap on a torus, and the chiral entanglement spectrum described by chiral SU(2)1SU{(2)}_{1}SU(2)1​ conformal field theory.