Doubts have been raised on the representation of chiral spin liquids exhibiting topological order in terms of projected entangled pair states (PEPSs). Here, starting from a simple spin-1/2 chiral frustrated Heisenberg model, we show that a faithful representation of the chiral spin liquid phase is in fact possible in terms of a generic PEPS upon variational optimization. We find a perfectly chiral gapless edge mode and a rapid decay of correlation functions at short distances consistent with a bulk gap, concomitant with a gossamer long-range tail originating from a PEPS bulk-edge correspondence. For increasing bond dimension, (i) the rapid decrease of spurious features-SU(2) symmetry breaking and long-range tails in correlations-together with (ii) a faster convergence of the ground state energy as compared to state-of-the-art cylinder matrix-product state simulations involving far more variational parameters, prove the fundamental relevance of the PEPS ansatz for simulating systems with chiral topological order.
Doubts have been raised on the representation of chiral spin liquids exhibiting topological order in terms of projected entangled pair states (PEPSs). Here, starting from a simple spin-1/2 chiral frustrated Heisenberg model, we show that a faithful representation of the chiral spin liquid phase is in fact possible in terms of a generic PEPS upon variational optimization. We find a perfectly chiral gapless edge mode and a rapid decay of correlation functions at short distances consistent with a bulk gap, concomitant with a gossamer long-range tail originating from a PEPS bulk-edge correspondence. For increasing bond dimension, (i) the rapid decrease of spurious features-SU(2) symmetry breaking and long-range tails in correlations-together with (ii) a faster convergence of the ground state energy as compared to state-of-the-art cylinder matrix-product state simulations involving far more variational parameters, prove the fundamental relevance of the PEPS ansatz for simulating systems with chiral topological order.
A simple spin-21 frustrated antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model (AFHM) on the square lattice---including chiral plaquette cyclic terms---was argued [A. E. B. Nielsen, G. Sierra, and J. I. Cirac, Nat. Commun. 4, 2864 (2013)] to host a bosonic Kalmeyer-Laughlin (KL) fractional quantum Hall ground state [V. Kalmeyer and R. B. Laughlin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2095 (1987)]. Here, we construct generic families of chiral projected entangled pair states (chiral PEPS) with low bond dimension (D=3,4,5) which, upon optimization, provide better variational energies than the KL Ansatz. The optimal D=3 PEPS exhibits chiral edge modes described by the Wess-Zumino-Witten SU(2)1 model, as expected for the KL spin liquid. However, we find evidence that, in contrast to the KL state, the PEPS spin liquids have power-law dimer-dimer correlations and exhibit a gossamer long-range tail in the spin-spin correlations. We conjecture that these features are genuine to local chiral AFHM on bipartite lattices.
Abelian and non-Abelian topological phases exhibiting protected chiral edge modes are ubiquitous in the realm of the fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect. Here, we investigate a spin-1 Hamiltonian on the square lattice which could, potentially, host the spin liquid analog of the (bosonic) non-Abelian Moore-Read FQH state, as suggested by exact diagonalization of small clusters. Using families of fully SU(2)-spin symmetric and translationally invariant chiral projected entangled pair states (PEPS), variational energy optimization is performed using infinite-PEPS methods, providing good agreement with density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) results. A careful analysis of the bulk spin-spin and dimer-dimer correlation functions in the optimized spin liquid suggests that they exhibit long-range ``gossamer tails''. From the investigation of the entanglement spectrum, we observe sharply defined chiral edge modes following the prediction of the SU(2)2 Wess-Zumino-Witten theory and exhibiting a conformal field theory (CFT) central charge c=3/2, as expected for a Moore-Read chiral spin liquid. Using the PEPS bulk-edge correspondence, we argue the ``weak'' criticality of the bulk is in fact a finite-D artifact of the chiral PEPS, which quickly becomes (practically) irrelevant as the PEPS bond dimension D is increased. We conclude that the PEPS formalism offers an unbiased and efficient method to investigate non-Abelian chiral spin liquids in quantum antiferromagnets.
We study the parton construction of chiral spin liquids (CSLs) using projected Gaussian fermionic entangled pair states (GfPEPSs). First, we show that GfPEPSs can represent generic spinless Chern insulators faithfully with finite bond dimensions. Then by applying the Gutzwiller projection to a bilayer GfPEPSs, spin-21 Abelian and non-Abelian CSLs are obtained for Chern number C=1 and 2, respectively. As a consequence of the topological obstruction for GfPEPSs, very weak Gossamer tails are observed in the correlation functions of the fermionic projected entangled pair state (PEPS) Ans\"atze, suggesting that the no-go theorem for chiral PEPS is universal but does not bring any practical limitation. Remarkably, without finetuning, all topological sectors can be constructed showing the expected number of chiral branches in the respective entanglement spectra, providing a sharp improvement with respect to the known bosonic PEPS approach.
Investigation of the J1-J2 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 J1-J2 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∘ Néel state to a putative QSL at J2/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 Resonating Valence Bond state, which can be written as a simple PEPS with bond dimension D=3, exhibits a reasonably good variational energy. Motivated by this finding, we have further constructed generic Z2-symmetric PEPS of larger bond dimension (up to D=7). We found that, under wavefunction optimization, spinons condense and, simultaneously, topological vison excitations get confined, hence precluding Z2 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.
The infinite projected entangled simplex state (iPESS), a type of tensor network (TN) state, has been used successfully for simulating and characterizing nonchiral spin liquids on the kagome lattice. Here, we demonstrate that iPESS also provides a faithful representation of a chiral spin liquid (CSL) on the same lattice, namely the ground state of the spin-1/2 kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet with a scalar chirality. By classifying local tensors according to SU(2) and point group symmetries, we construct a chiral ansatz breaking reflection P and time reversal T symmetries while preserving PT. The variational TN states are shown to host, for bond dimension $D\ensuremath{\ge}8$, a chiral gapless entanglement spectrum following SU(2)1 conformal field theory. The correlation function shows a small weight long-range tail complying with the prediction of the TN bulk-edge correspondence. We identify a nonchiral manifold spanned by only a subset of symmetric tensors where a new emergent tensor conservation law is realized. This allows us to both probe the stability of the nonchiral spin liquid and discuss its transition to CSL induced by a scalar chirality term.
The infinite projected entangled simplex state (iPESS), a type of tensor network (TN) state, has been used successfully for simulating and characterizing {\it non-chiral} spin liquids on the kagome lattice. Here, we demonstrate that iPESS also provides a faithful representation of a {\it chiral} spin liquid (CSL) on the same lattice, namely the ground state of the spin-1/2 kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet with a scalar chirality. By classifying local tensors according to SU(2) and point group symmetries, we construct a chiral ansatz breaking reflection P and time reversal T symmetries while preserving PT. The variational TN states are shown to host, for bond dimension D≥8, a chiral gapless entanglement spectrum following SU(2)1 conformal field theory. The correlation function shows a small weight long-range tail complying with the prediction of the TN bulk-edge correspondence. %{\color{red}With more constraints included, the chiral ansatz is reduced to a non-chiral one which preserves full point group symmetries due to an emergent {\it tensor conservation law} and is of relevance to the ground state at the Heisenberg point. Lastly, by simulations in the complete ansatz family we discuss the transition from the non-chiral spin liquid to the CSL induced by the scalar chirality term.} We identify a non-chiral manifold spanned by only a subset of symmetric tensors where a new emergent {\it tensor conservation law} is realized. This allows us to both probe the stability of the non-chiral spin liquid and discuss its transition to CSL induced by a scalar chirality term.