In this work we study the crystal symmetry fractionalization in chiral spin liquids with the chiral-semion topological order. We show that if such a chiral spin liquid is realized in a two-dimensional lattice model with odd number of spin-
21 per unit cell and the state preserves spin rotation symmetry and translation symmetries, the semion excitation must carry both half-integer spin and fractional crystal quantum numbers. As a result, only a unique symmetry enriched topological phase can be realized in chiral spin liquids in a spin-
21 kagome lattice model. These fractional symmetry quantum numbers are confirmed numerically using ground state wave functions obtained with the density matrix renormalization group method.
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.
The fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) realized in two-dimensional electron systems under a magnetic field is one of the most remarkable discoveries in condensed matter physics. Interestingly, it has been proposed that FQHE can also emerge in time-reversal invariant spin systems, known as the chiral spin liquid (CSL) characterized by the topological order and the emerging of the fractionalized quasiparticles. A CSL can naturally lead to the exotic superconductivity originating from the condense of anyonic quasiparticles. Although CSL was highly sought after for more than twenty years, it had never been found in a spin isotropic Heisenberg model or related materials. By developing a density-matrix renormalization group based method for adiabatically inserting flux, we discover a FQHE in a spin-½ isotropic kagome Heisenberg model. We identify this FQHE state as the long-sought CSL with a uniform chiral order spontaneously breaking time reversal symmetry, which is uniquely characterized by the half-integer quantized topological Chern number protected by a robust excitation gap. The CSL is found to be at the neighbor of the previously identified Z2 spin liquid, which may lead to an exotic quantum phase transition between two gapped topological spin liquids.
Kalmeyer-Laughlin (KL) chiral spin liquid (CSL) is a type of quantum spin liquid without time-reversal symmetry, and it is considered as the parent state of an exotic type of superconductor--anyon superconductor. Such an exotic state has been sought for more than twenty years; however, it remains unclear whether it can exist in a realistic system where time-reversal symmetry is breaking (T breaking) spontaneously. By using the density matrix renormalization group, we show that KL CSL exists in a frustrated anisotropic kagome Heisenberg model, which has spontaneous T breaking. We find that our model has two topological degenerate ground states, which exhibit nonvanishing scalar chirality order and are protected by finite excitation gap. Furthermore, we identify this state as KL CSL by the characteristic edge conformal field theory from the entanglement spectrum and the quasiparticles braiding statistics extracted from the modular matrix. We also study how this CSL phase evolves as the system approaches the nearest-neighbor kagome Heisenberg model.
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.
Using density-matrix renormalization-group calculations for infinite cylinders, we elucidate the properties of the spin-liquid phase of the spin-$\frac{1}{2}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}{J}_{1}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}_{2}$ Heisenberg model on the triangular lattice. We find four distinct ground states characteristic of a nonchiral,
Z2 topologically ordered state with vison and spinon excitations. We shed light on the interplay of topological ordering and global symmetries in the model by detecting fractionalization of time-reversal and space-group dihedral symmetries in the anyonic sectors, which leads to the coexistence of symmetry protected and intrinsic topological order. The anyonic sectors, and information on the particle statistics, can be characterized by degeneracy patterns and symmetries of the entanglement spectrum. We demonstrate the ground states on finite-width cylinders are short-range correlated and gapped; however, some features in the entanglement spectrum suggest that the system develops gapless spinonlike edge excitations in the large-width limit.