This paper shows that the standard Hubbard model on the triangular lattice with three color fermions has a chiral phase at intermediate coupling when kinetic fluctuations are strong enough to destroy the three-sublattice long range order but not strong enough yet to drive the system into another phase or into the metallic regime.
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.
Despite a plethora of numerical studies, the nature of the quantum spin liquid near the Mott transition in the triangular-lattice Hubbard model remains controversial. Using a careful DMRG analysis on long cylinders up to width 6, the authors identify here a gapped spin liquid with robust chiral long-range correlations. The analysis unveils the need for surprisingly long systems for the spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking to occur due to strong open boundary effects. This reconciles previous contradictory results about this quantum spin liquid.
We investigate the evolution of the Mott insulators in the triangular lattice Hubbard Model, as a function of hole doping $\ensuremath{\delta}$ in both the strong and intermediate coupling limits. Using the advanced density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, at light hole doping $\ensuremath{\delta}\ensuremath{\lesssim}10%$, we find a significant difference between strong and intermediate couplings. Notably, at intermediate coupling an unusual metallic state emerges, with short ranged spin correlations but long ranged spin-chirality order. Moreover, no clear Fermi surface or wave vector is observed, this chiral metal also exhibits staggered loop current, which breaks the translational symmetry. These features disappear on increasing interaction strength or on further doping. At strong coupling, the 120 degree magnetic order of the insulating magnet persists for light doping, and produces hole pockets with a well-defined Fermi surface. On further doping, $\ensuremath{\delta}\ensuremath{\approx}10%\ensuremath{\sim}20%$ SDW order and coherent hole Fermi pockets are found at both strong and intermediate couplings. At even higher doping $\ensuremath{\delta}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}20%$, the SDW order is suppressed and the spin-singlet Cooper pair correlations are simultaneously enhanced. We also briefly comment on the strong particle-hole asymmetry of the model.
A chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase has been recently reported in the Hubbard model on a triangular lattice at half-filling. It emerges in an intermediate coupling regime, which is sandwiched between a 120∘ antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase and a metallic phase as a function of on-site repulsion U. In this work, we examine how the charge fluctuation may cause the CSL and complex phase diagram. We first identify an exact sign structure of the model at arbitrary temperature, sample size, and doping, which is reduced from the original Fermi exchange signs of the electrons by finite U. In particular, the spin and charge degrees of freedom are generally entangled via the phase-string in the sign structure. By precisely switching off such a phase-string, the CSL phase is shown to disappear, with only the 120∘ AFM order remaining down to weak U by a density matrix renormalization group calculation. Here the charge fluctuation is effectively decoupled from the AFM background, which is a 120∘ AFM order due to a geometric Berry phase in the sign structure of the triangular lattice. General implications for the Mott physics will also be discussed.
In a recent study [Phys. Rev. X 10, 021042 (2020)], we showed using large-scale density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations on infinite cylinders that the triangular lattice Hubbard model has a chiral spin liquid phase. In this work, we introduce hopping anisotropy in the model, making one of the three distinct bonds on the lattice stronger or weaker compared with the other two. We implement the anisotropy in two inequivalent ways, one which respects the mirror symmetry of the cylinder and one which breaks this symmetry. In the full range of anisotropy, from the square lattice to weakly coupled one-dimensional chains, we find a variety of phases. Near the isotropic limit we find the three phases identified in our previous work: metal, chiral spin liquid, and ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ spiral order; we note that a recent paper suggests the apparently metallic phase may actually be a Luther-Emery liquid, which would also be in agreement with our results. When one bond is weakened by a relatively small amount, the ground state quickly becomes the square lattice N\'eel order. When one bond is strengthened, the story is much less clear, with the phases that we find depending on the orientation of the anisotropy and on the cylinder circumference. While our work is to our knowledge the first DMRG study of the anisotropic triangular lattice Hubbard model, the overall phase diagram we find is broadly consistent with that found previously using other methods, such as variational Monte Carlo and dynamical mean field theory.
We study the effects of a periodically varying electric field on the Hubbard model at half filling on a triangular lattice. The electric field is incorporated through the phase of the nearest-neighbor hopping amplitude via the Peierls prescription. When the on-site interaction U is much larger than the hopping, the effective Hamiltonian Heff describing the spin sector can be found using a Floquet perturbation theory. To third order in the hopping, Heff is found to have the form of a Heisenberg antiferromagnet with three different nearest-neighbor couplings $({J}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}},{J}_{\ensuremath{\beta}},{J}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}})$ on bonds lying along the different directions. Remarkably, when the periodic driving does not have time-reversal symmetry, Heff can also have a chiral three-spin interaction in each triangle, with the coefficient C of the interaction having opposite signs on up- and down-pointing triangles. Thus periodic driving which breaks time-reversal symmetry can simulate the effect of a perpendicular magnetic flux which is known to generate such a chiral term in the spin sector, even though our model does not have a magnetic flux. The four parameters $({J}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}},{J}_{\ensuremath{\beta}},{J}_{\ensuremath{\gamma}},C)$ depend on the amplitude, frequency, and direction of the oscillating electric field. We then study the spin model as a function of these parameters using exact diagonalization and find a rich phase diagram of the ground state with seven different phases consisting of two kinds of ordered phases (collinear and coplanar) and disordered phases. Thus periodic driving of the Hubbard model on the triangular lattice can lead to an effective spin model whose couplings can be tuned over a range of values thereby producing a variety of interesting phases.