This work is devoted to the study, the development, and the application of a new systematic method yielding the dominant correlations that govern a quantum many-body state in an unbiased way. The dominant correlations between any two disjoint blocks of a system are extracted by performing a singular value decomposition of the correlation density matrix (CDM) between those blocks. We determine several mathematical properties and features of this method, in particular the consequences of the lattice symmetries or the symmetries intrinsic to the studied state on the singular values spectrum. We investigate the relation between the norm of the CDM – providing a natural measure of the total correlation between the two blocks – and the so-called mutual information, a quantity originally introduced in quantum information theory. This novel tool is utilized for sheding new light on the zero temperature physics of the spin-1/2 frustrated ferromagnetic J1–J2 Heisenberg chain in a magnetic field as well as on the low-energy physics of the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the two-dimensional kagomé lattice. The states are computed using exact diagonalization and the density matrix renormalization group procedure in the first case, and exact diagonalization only in the second case. This work is introduced in Chapter 1. The first model is then presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 introduces the CDM method, and Chapter 4 is devoted to the study of the kagomé antiferromagnet. In the J1–J2 chain, we reveal a vector chiral phase at low magnetic field and a sequence of multipolar Luttinger liquid phases at high field. We explicitly show that these multipolar phases result from the destabilization – driven by a locking mechanism – of the classical spiral ground state in the absence of magnetic field. This point of view is completely new: multipolar phases were known to be a possible destabilization of ferromagnetic phases, but they have never been reported as a destabilization of spiral states yet. Regarding the kagomé antiferromagnet, we address for the first time the question of the nature of the singlet states forming its quite dense singlet spectrum above the ground state. We show that some of these low-lying singlet states have large dimer correlations which do not seem to significantly decrease with the distance, moreover our CDM studies confirm that the dominant correlations in those singlet states are of the dimer-dimer type. Studies of Von Neumann block entropies reveal a very short correlation length on the one hand, and entropies that are roughly independent on the energy of the state under consideration on the other hand. The scenario of a valence bond crystal phase is investigated and the relevance of different kinds of crystals (from the literature or ad hoc) for reproducing the dimer correlations in the 36-site sample is probed.
This work is devoted to the study, the development, and the application of a new systematic method yielding the dominant correlations that govern a quantum many-body state in an unbiased way. The dominant correlations between any two disjoint blocks of a system are extracted by performing a singular value decomposition of the correlation density matrix (CDM) between those blocks. We determine several mathematical properties and features of this method, in particular the consequences of the lattice symmetries or the symmetries intrinsic to the studied state on the singular values spectrum. We investigate the relation between the norm of the CDM – providing a natural measure of the total correlation between the two blocks – and the so-called mutual information, a quantity originally introduced in quantum information theory. This novel tool is utilized for sheding new light on the zero temperature physics of the spin-1/2 frustrated ferromagnetic J1–J2 Heisenberg chain in a magnetic field as well as on the low-energy physics of the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the two-dimensional kagomé lattice. The states are computed using exact diagonalization and the density matrix renormalization group procedure in the first case, and exact diagonalization only in the second case. This work is introduced in Chapter 1. The first model is then presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 introduces the CDM method, and Chapter 4 is devoted to the study of the kagomé antiferromagnet. In the J1–J2 chain, we reveal a vector chiral phase at low magnetic field and a sequence of multipolar Luttinger liquid phases at high field. We explicitly show that these multipolar phases result from the destabilization – driven by a locking mechanism – of the classical spiral ground state in the absence of magnetic field. This point of view is completely new: multipolar phases were known to be a possible destabilization of ferromagnetic phases, but they have never been reported as a destabilization of spiral states yet. Regarding the kagomé antiferromagnet, we address for the first time the question of the nature of the singlet states forming its quite dense singlet spectrum above the ground state. We show that some of these low-lying singlet states have large dimer correlations which do not seem to significantly decrease with the distance, moreover our CDM studies confirm that the dominant correlations in those singlet states are of the dimer-dimer type. Studies of Von Neumann block entropies reveal a very short correlation length on the one hand, and entropies that are roughly independent on the energy of the state under consideration on the other hand. The scenario of a valence bond crystal phase is investigated and the relevance of different kinds of crystals (from the literature or ad hoc) for reproducing the dimer correlations in the 36-site sample is probed.
We study the ground-state phase diagram of the quantum spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice with first- (J1<0), second- (J2<0), and third-neighbor interactions (Jd>0) by means of analytical low-energy field theory and numerical density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) studies. The results offer a consistent picture of the Jd-dominant regime in terms of three sets of spin chains weakly coupled by the ferromagnetic interchain interactions J1,2. When either J1 or J2 is much stronger than the other one, the model is found to support one of two cuboctohedral phases, cuboc1, and cuboc2. These cuboc states host noncoplanar long-ranged magnetic order and possess finite scalar spin chirality. However, in the compensated regime ${J}_{1}\ensuremath{\simeq}{J}_{2}$, a valence bond crystal phase emerges between the two cuboc phases. We find excellent agreement between an analytical theory based on coupled spin chains and unbiased DMRG calculations, including at a very detailed level of comparison of the structure of the valence bond crystal state. To our knowledge, this is the first such comprehensive understanding of a highly frustrated two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnet. We find no evidence of either the one-dimensional gapless spin liquid or the chiral spin liquids, which were previously suggested by parton mean-field theories.
Ever since the introduction of resonating valence bond states by P.\\ W.\\ Anderson in 1970s, the search for exotic many--body quantum behavior in peculiar states of matter known as quantum spin liquids has been a central challenge in the field of condensed matter physics. An important searching ground for such \\emph{quantum--ness} is the low energy physics of frustrated magnets. In a quantum system, frustration---the inability of a physical system to achieve a global state that consistently minimizes its energy locally---enables the unavoidable quantum fluctuations to hybridize an extensive number of classical states into highly entangled quantum states at low temperatures. It can be argued that this is the most practical approach to achieve genuine many--body quantum behavior at large scales. The fundamental source of frustration in many physical systems, is the existence of local non--commuting terms. In the case of antiferromagnet spin theories the simplest examples are triangles of nearest--neighboring sites. Consequently, lattices with triangles as building blocks have long been studied in hopes of discovering spin liquids physics. In particular the kagome lattice, which is composed of corner--sharing triangles, has been the center of at least four decades of spin liquid research. This is due to the underconstrained nature of system made out of corner--sharing triangles. After the first three chapters, introduction in chapter~\\ref{chap:intro}, preliminary physics in chapter~\\ref{chap:prelim}, and a brief introduction to spin--liquids in chapter~\\ref{chap:QSLs}, in chapter~\\ref{chap:kagome} I tackle a simpler version of the long-standing problem of spin--1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets by considering a quasi--1D lattice consisting entirely of corner--sharing triangles, \\emph{kagome strip}. I illustrate that the standard Heisenberg antiferromagnet Hamiltonian over kagome strip is an extended gapless quantum phase, that is well characterized by two fermionic/bosonic gapless modes and power--law decaying spin and bond--energy correlations. I also demonstrate that the correlation functions oscillate at tunably incommensurate wave vectors. It turns out that this phase can be identified by a particular marginal instability of a two-band spinon Fermi surface coupled to an emergent U(1) gauge field. This interpretation is supported by analytic Abelian bosonization and with extensive numerical large--scale density matrix renormalization group study as well as variational Monte Carlo calculations on Gutzwiller ans\\"atz wave functions. This intriguing result is the first numerical demonstration of emergent fermionic spinons in a simple SU(2) invariant nearest-neighbor Heisenberg model beyond the strictly 1D (Bethe chain) limit. The unexpected success of the fermionic spinons in describing the low energy physics of kagome antiferromagnet, reintroduces the questions about the validity of spinon physics as an effective theory of quantum spin liquids. However, numerical methods are still far behind the theoretical advances. And still even today, an accurate description of the quantum spin liquid states using tensor network methods is notoriously challenging. It is known that for large quasi-1D systems, the density matrix renormalization group and related methods usually require significant computational resources and sometimes fail to converge to a satisfactory state. On the other hand, variational wavefunctions acquired from the Gutzwiller projection of gaussian fermionic theories have long served as both a theoretical starting point for the construction of such spin liquid states and as an inspiration for numerical variational Monte Carlo (VMC) to calculate observables of interest. Noting this observation I examine a different method by exploring the possibility of constructing a matrix product state (MPS) representation for a Gutzwiller--projected state from two given MPS representations of gaussian fermionic theories in the \\ref{chap:gutz} chapter. I investigate the complexity of different approaches to achieve Gutzwiller projection for MPSs and introduce the novel algorithm which we call the Guzwiller zipper method. The performance of the algorithm is tested against two copies of a single half-filled band of spin-1/2 fermionic spinons. In a successful attempt to describe the nature of spin liquid states on quasi-1D strips of triangular and kagome-like lattices, I apply this method to two MPS of multi-band fermionic spinon theories and compare with the complexity of the traditional VMC approach. In particular, we methodically disprove the conjecture of a spinon fermi surface spin liquid for the triangular lattice. Finally, I conclude this thesis by laying out a bird's eye view of the current and future of spin liquid physics in kagome and triangular lattices and pointing out numerous possible applications of the novel Gutzwiller zipper method. In addition, I would also discuss its possible extensions to more complicated tensor networks as well as versions for higher spatial dimensions.
We enhance the pseudo-fermion functional-renormalisation-group (PFFRG) method for the investigation of highly frustrated quantum spin systems in two significant ways. On one hand, we generalise the method towards off-diagonal Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya (DM) interactions and single-ion anisotropies. On the other hand, we develop a self-consistent Fock-like mean-field technique which is based on vertex functions from a PFFRG analysis and calculates effective free spinon models for the considered systems at low energies. In Chap. 1, we introduce the fundamental mathematical concepts on which our studies rely. The so-called flow equations for the PFFRG are then derived in Chap. 3. The first part of our original work is presented in Chap. 4 where we, for the first time, extend the PFFRG scheme towards off-diagonal spin interactions and therefore confirm the quite general applicability of this method. There are two important results from our investigations of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg-DM model on the kagome lattice in this chapter. One is that a finite DM interaction enlarges magnetically ordered phases and thereby shrinks the paramagnetic phases which possibly house spin liquid states. The other important result is that the mineral herbertsmithite which inspired this project lies in close proximity to a quantum critical point. We obtain a phase diagram for the considered Hamiltonian and qualitatively good results in comparison to experimental data for herbertsmithite [68,69]. Our collaboration with a research group from Cologne is summarised in Chap. 5. Here, we investigate two different XXZ models with tetragonally split-up second-neighbour Heisenberg interactions and single-ion anisotropies on the diamond lattice in order to study the spin-1 A-site spinel NiRh2O4. We are able to confirm the existence of a paramagnetic phase for one of the considered models. However, such a paramagnetic behaviour cannot be verified for the Hamiltonians suggested in Refs. [29] and [30]. The second main part of this thesis is contained in Chap. 6. The developed PFFRG plus mean-field method enables us to characterise the effective low-energy spinon band structure of the spin-1/2 J1-J2 (nearest-neighbour) Heisenberg model on the square (kagome) lattice. This is achieved by comparing self-consistently determined overall amplitudes for different mean-field ansätze which are taken from corresponding PSG classifications in Refs. [182] and [111]. Our studies imply that the square lattice model realises a SU(2) spin liquid with Pi-fluxes through elementary plaquettes and that the spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnet is most likely described by a Z2 spin liquid called Z2[0,Pi]Alpha. We argue that our analysed models have current experimental relevance and that the developed techniques show plenty of possibilities for future applications. A detailed summary and discussion of all methods and results is provided in Chap. 7.
A useful concept for finding numerically the dominant correlations of a given ground state in an interacting quantum lattice system in an unbiased way is the correlation density matrix (CDM). For two disjoint, separated clusters, it is defined to be the density matrix of their union minus the direct product of their individual density matrices and contains all the correlations between the two clusters. We show how to extract from the CDM a survey of the relative strengths of the system's correlations in different symmetry sectors and the nature of their decay with distance (power law or exponential), as well as detailed information on the operators carrying long-range correlations and the spatial dependence of their correlation functions. To achieve this goal, we introduce a new method of analysing the CDM, termed the dominant operator basis (DOB) method, which identifies in an unbiased fashion a small set of operators for each cluster that serve as a basis for the dominant correlations of the system. We illustrate this method by analysing the CDM for a spinless extended Hubbard model that features a competition between charge density correlations and pairing correlations, and show that the DOB method successfully identifies their relative strengths and dominant correlators. To calculate the ground state of this model, we use the density matrix renormalization group, formulated in terms of a variational matrix product state (MPS) approach within which subsequent determination of the CDM is very straightforward. In an extended appendix, we give a detailed tutorial introduction to our variational MPS approach for ground state calculations for one-dimensional quantum chain models. We present in detail how MPSs overcome the problem of large Hilbert space dimensions in these models and describe all the techniques needed for handling them in practice.
We present the phase diagram of the frustrated ferromagnetic S = 1/2 Heisenberg J 1 - J 2 chain in a magnetic field, obtained by large scale exact diagonalizations and densitymatrix-renormalization-group simulations. A vector chirally ordered state, metamagnetic behavior and a sequence of spin multipolar Luttinger liquid phases up to hexadecupolar order are found. Starting from classical considerations, we point out that various multipolar correlations are imprinted in a magnetic state and that they can survive the onset of frustration and quantum fluctuations which destroy the conventional magnetic order. Our results also shed new light on previously discovered spin multipolar phases in two-dimensional S = 1/2 quantum magnets in a magnetic field.
We study the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with competing ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor J_1 and antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor J_2 exchange couplings in the presence of magnetic field. We use both numerical approaches (the density matrix renormalization group method and exact diagonalization) and effective field-theory approach, and obtain the ground-state phase diagram for wide parameter range of the coupling ratio J_1/J_2. The phase diagram is rich and has a variety of phases, including the vector chiral phase, the nematic phase, and other multipolar phases. In the vector chiral phase, which appears in relatively weak magnetic field, the ground state exhibits long-range order (LRO) of vector chirality which spontaneously breaks a parity symmetry. The nematic phase shows a quasi-LRO of antiferro-nematic spin correlation, and arises as a result of formation of two-magnon bound states in high magnetic fields. Similarly, the higher multipolar phases, such as triatic (p=3) and quartic (p=4) phases, are formed through binding of p magnons near the saturation fields, showing quasi-LRO of antiferro-multipolar spin correlations. The multipolar phases cross over to spin density wave phases as the magnetic field is decreased, before encountering a phase transition to the vector chiral phase at a lower field. The implications of our results to quasi-one-dimensional frustrated magnets (e.g., LiCuVO_4) are discussed.