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arXiv:1610.04727 · Physical Review Letters

Gapless Spin-Liquid Ground State in the S = 1 / 2 Kagome Antiferromagnet

Haijun Liao, Z. Y. Xie, Jialin Chen, Ziyi Liu, Haidong Xie, Rui-Zhen Huang, Bruce Normand, Tao Xiang

Published Mar 29, 2017• 384 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The defining problem in frustrated quantum magnetism, the ground state of the nearest-neighbor S=1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice, has defied all theoretical and numerical methods employed to date. We apply the formalism of tensor-network states, specifically the method of projected entangled simplex states, which combines infinite system size with a correct accounting for multipartite entanglement. By studying the ground-state energy, the finite magnetic order appearing at finite tensor bond dimensions, and the effects of a next-nearest-neighbor coupling, we demonstrate that the ground state is a gapless spin liquid. We discuss the comparison with other numerical studies and the physical interpretation of this result.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.118.137202

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The defining problem in frustrated quantum magnetism, the ground state of the nearest-neighbor S=1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice, has defied all theoretical and numerical methods employed to date. We apply the formalism of tensor-network states, specifically the method of projected entangled simplex states, which combines infinite system size with a correct accounting for multipartite entanglement. By studying the ground-state energy, the finite magnetic order appearing at finite tensor bond dimensions, and the effects of a next-nearest-neighbor coupling, we demonstrate that the ground state is a gapless spin liquid. We discuss the comparison with other numerical studies and the physical interpretation of this result.
The defining problem in frustrated quantum magnetism, the ground state of the nearest-neighbor S ¼ 1=2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice, has defied all theoretical and numerical methods employed to date.We apply the formalism of tensor-network states, specifically the method of projected entangled simplex states, which combines infinite system size with a correct accounting for multipartite entanglement.By studying the ground-state energy, the finite magnetic order appearing at finite tensor bond dimensions, and the effects of a next-nearest-neighbor coupling, we demonstrate that the ground state is a gapless spin liquid.We discuss the comparison with other numerical studies and the physical interpretation of this result.
We use the density matrix renormalization group to perform accurate calculations of the ground state of the nearest-neighbor quantum spin S = 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice. We study this model on numerous long cylinders with circumferences up to 12 lattice spacings. Through a combination of very-low-energy and small finite-size effects, our results provide strong evidence that, for the infinite two-dimensional system, the ground state of this model is a fully gapped spin liquid.
A preponderance of evidence suggests that the ground state of the nearest-neighbor S=1/2S=1/2S=1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice is a gapless spin liquid. Many candidate materials for the realization of this model possess in addition a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction. We study this system by tensor-network methods and deduce that a weak but finite DM interaction is required to destabilize the gapless spin-liquid state. The critical magnitude, ${D}_{c}/J\ensuremath{\simeq}0.012(2)$, lies well below the DM strength proposed in the kagome material herbertsmithite, indicating a need to reassess the apparent spin-liquid behavior reported in this system.
We apply the symmetric tensor network state (TNS) to study the nearest-neighbor spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice. Our method keeps track of the global and gauge symmetries in the TNS update procedure and in tensor renormalization group (TRG) calculations. We also introduce a very sensitive probe for the gap of the ground state---the modular matrices, which can also determine the topological order if the ground state is gapped. We find that the ground state of the Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice is a gapped spin liquid with the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ topological order (or toric code type), which has a long correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\sim}10$ unit cells. We justify that the TRG method can handle very large systems with thousands of spins. Such a long $\ensuremath{\xi}$ explains the gapless behaviors observed in simulations on smaller systems with less than 300 spins or shorter than the length of 10 unit cells. We also discuss experimental implications of the topological excitations encoded in our symmetric tensors.
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 apply the symmetric tensor network state (TNS) to study the nearest-neighbor spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice. Our method keeps track of the global and gauge symmetries in the TNS update procedure and in tensor renormalization group (TRG) calculations. We also introduce a very sensitive probe for the gap of the ground state—the modular matrices, which can also determine the topological order if the ground state is gapped. We find that the ground state of the Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice is a gapped spin liquid with the Z[subscript 2] topological order (or toric code type), which has a long correlation length ξ∼10 unit cells. We justify that the TRG method can handle very large systems with thousands of spins. Such a long ξ explains the gapless behaviors observed in simulations on smaller systems with less than 300 spins or shorter than the length of 10 unit cells. We also discuss experimental implications of the topological excitations encoded in our symmetric tensors.