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arXiv:2602.10002 · Physical Review Research

Emergence of a Luttinger Liquid Phase in an Array of Chiral Molecules

Muhammad Arsalan Ali Akbar, Bretislav Friedrich, Sabre Kais

quant-phSubmitted Feb 10, 2026• Announced Feb 11, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose a robust platform for simulating chiral quantum magnetism using linear arrays of trapped asymmetric top molecules, specifically 1,2-propanediol ($\mathrm{C_{3}H_{8}O_{2}}$). By mapping the Stark-dressed rotational states onto an effective spin-$1/2$ subspace, we rigorously derive a generalized $XXZ$ Heisenberg Hamiltonian governing the underlying many-body dynamics. Unlike standard solid-state models where the topological Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction (DMI) is introduced phenomenologically, we demonstrate that DMI emerges \textit{ab initio} from the molecular stereochemistry. Specifically, the interference between the transition dipole moments of heterochiral enantiomer pairs (L-R), which breaks inversion symmetry, generates a tunable DMI that stabilizes a Chiral Luttinger Liquid phase. Through a comprehensive phase-diagram analysis, we identify an optimal experimental regime characterized by intermolecular separations of \( r \approx 1.5~\mathrm{nm} \) and intermediate electric-field strengths \( d\varepsilon/B \approx 2.5 \). In this window, the system is protected from trivial field-polarized phases and exhibits a robust gapless spin-spiral texture. Our results establish 1,2-propanediol arrays as a versatile quantum simulator, providing a direct microscopic link between molecular chirality and topological many-body phases.

Journal reference
Phys. Rev. Research (2026)
DOI
10.1103/b85s-wg3j

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As one of the most intriguing states of matter, the chiral spin liquid (CSL) has attracted much scientific interest while its existence and mechanism in crystalline strongly correlated systems remain hotly debated. On the other hand, strong correlation driven emergent phenomena can be realized in twisted transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers with a tremendously tunable large length scale providing a new platform for the emergence of CSLs. We focus on a strongly correlated model relevant to heterobilayer WSe2/MoSe2{\text{WSe}}_{2}/{\text{MoSe}}_{2}WSe2​/MoSe2​ and investigate the Mott insulating phase at half filling under an out-of-plane magnetic field. Considering both its orbital and spin Zeeman effects we identify three conventionally ordered phases including a ${120}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$ N\'eel phase, a stripe phase, and an up-up-down phase. For intermediate fields an emergent quantum spin liquid phase is identified with partial spin polarization. We further characterize its topological nature as the $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ Laughlin CSL through the topological entanglement spectrum and quantized spin pumping under spin flux insertion. In addition, we map out the quantum phase diagram for different twisted angles in an experimentally accessible parameter regime.
Gapless Luttinger liquid is conventionally viewed as topologically trivial, unless it hosts degenerate ground states and or entanglement spectrum, which necessitates partial bulk degree of freedom to be gapped out. Here we predict an emergent gapless topological Luttinger liquid which is beyond the conventional scenarios and is characterized by the nontrivial many-body bulk spin texture, and propose feasible scheme for experimental observation. We consider a one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled Fermi-Hubbard model with fractional filling, whose low-energy physics is effectively described by a spinless Luttinger liquid and is trivial in the conventional characterization. We show that, as being tuned by the filling factor and interaction strength, the many-body ground state may exhibit nontrivial winding in its bulk spin texture in the projected momentum space, manifesting an emergent topological phase. A topological transition occurs when the projected spin-state at a high symmetry momentum becomes fully mixed one, resulting from competing processes of particle scattering to the lower and higher subbands, for which the spin texture at such momentum point is ill-defined, but the Luttinger liquid keeps gapless through the transition. Surprisingly, at relatively small filling the Luttinger liquid remains topologically nontrivial even at infinitely strong interaction. The results can be generalized to finite temperature which facilitates the real experimental detection. This work shows a novel gapless topological Luttinger liquid whose characterization is beyond the low-energy effective theory, and can be verified based on current experiments.
In this work, we introduce a solid-state platform for building quantum simulators using implanted spin centers in solid-state materials. We build upon the proposal for an S=1S=1S=1 chain of spin centers coupled through the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction and subjected to an external magnetic field as a quantum simulator for critical floating phases. We introduce another magnetic field and map the system to the interacting Kitaev chain. This setup, tunable through the applied fields and the orientation of the spin centers within the crystal, exhibits a variety of rich quantum behavior which notably includes floating phases, a Z2Z_2Z2​ symmetry-breaking phase, and lines of both Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) and Pokrovsky-Talapov transitions. Furthermore, we employ several novel methods to calculate the Luttinger liquid parameter in our model with incommensurate correlations. We find that these methods provide a route to identify BKT transitions with less computational resources than utilizing entanglement entropy and central charge.
We study the interplay of competing interactions in spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ triangular Heisenberg model through tuning the first- (J1{J}_{1}J1​), second- (J2{J}_{2}J2​), and third-neighbor (J3{J}_{3}J3​) couplings. Based on a large-scale density-matrix renormalization group calculation, we identify a quantum phase diagram of the system and discover a gapless chiral spin-liquid (CSL) phase in the intermediate J2{J}_{2}J2​ and J3{J}_{3}J3​ regime. This CSL state spontaneously breaks time-reversal symmetry with finite scalar chiral order, and it has gapless excitations implied by a vanishing spin triplet gap and a finite central charge on the cylinder. Moreover, the central charge grows rapidly with the cylinder circumference, indicating emergent spinon Fermi surfaces. To understand the numerical results we propose a parton mean-field spin-liquid state, the U(1)U(1)U(1) staggered flux state, which breaks time-reversal symmetry with chiral edge modes by adding a Chern insulator mass to Dirac spinons in the U(1)U(1)U(1) Dirac spin liquid. This state also breaks lattice rotational symmetries and possesses two spinon Fermi surfaces driven by nonzero J2{J}_{2}J2​ and J3{J}_{3}J3​, which naturally explains the numerical results. This realizes an example of a gapless CSL state with coexisting spinon Fermi surfaces and chiral edge states, demonstrating the rich family of interesting quantum phases emergent from competing interactions in triangular-lattice magnets.