In quantum spin liquid states, the fractionalized spinon excitations can carry fractional crystal symmetry quantum numbers, and this symmetry fractionalization distinguishes different symmetry-enriched spin liquid states with identical intrinsic topological order. In this work we propose a simple way to detect signatures of such crystal symmetry fractionalizations from the crystal symmetry representations of the ground state wave function. We demonstrate our method on projected
Z2 spin liquid wave functions on the kagome lattice, and show that it can be used to classify generic wave functions. Particularly our method can be used to distinguish several proposed candidates of
Z2 spin liquid states on the kagome lattice.
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.
In quantum spin liquid states, the fractionalized spinon excitations can carry fractional crystal symmetry quantum numbers, and this symmetry fractionalization distinguishes different symmetry-enriched spin liquid states with identical intrinsic topological order. In this work we propose a simple way to detect signatures of such crystal symmetry fractionalizations from the crystal symmetry representations of the ground state wave function. We demonstrate our method on projected Z[subscript 2] spin liquid wave functions on the kagome lattice, and show that it can be used to classify generic wave functions. Particularly our method can be used to distinguish several proposed candidates of Z[subscript 2] spin liquid states on the kagome lattice.