Kagome model for a Z(2) quantum spin liquid

AMER PHYSICAL SOC, 2020
Journal paper

We present a study of a simple model antiferromagnet consisting of a sum of nearest-neighbor SO(N) singlet projectors on the kagome lattice. Our model shares some features with the popular S = 1/2 kagome antiferromagnet but is specifically designed to be free of the sign problem of quantum Monte Carlo. In our numerical analysis, we find as a function of N a quadrupolar magnetic state and a wide range of a quantum spin liquid. A solvable large-N generalization suggests that the quantum spin liquid in our original model is a gapped Z(2) topological phase. Supporting this assertion, a numerical study of the entanglement entropy in the sign free model shows a quantized topological contribution.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts

Related publications

AMER PHYSICAL SOC, 2020
Journal paper

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/275746?ln=en

About this result

Related concepts (13)

Related concepts

Related publications (7)

Related publications

Quantum Monte Carlo

Quantum Monte Carlo encompasses a large family of computational methods whose common aim is the study of complex quantum systems. One of the major goals of these approaches is to provide a reliable so

Monte Carlo method

Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use rando

Antiferromagnetism

In materials that exhibit antiferromagnetism, the magnetic moments of atoms or molecules, usually related to the spins of electrons, align in a regular pattern with neighboring spins (on different

Correlation amplitude and entanglement entropy in random spin chains

Nicolas Laflorencie

Using strong-disorder renormalization group, numerical exact diagonalization, and quantum Monte Carlo methods, we revisit the random antiferromagnetic XXZ spin-1/2 chain focusing on the long-length and ground-state behavior of the average time-independent spin-spin correlation function C(l)=upsilon l(-eta). In addition to the well-known universal (disorder-independent) power-law exponent eta=2, we find interesting universal features displayed by the prefactor upsilon=upsilon(o)/3, if l is odd, and upsilon=upsilon(e)/3, otherwise. Although upsilon(o) and upsilon(e) are nonuniversal (disorder dependent) and distinct in magnitude, the combination upsilon(o)+upsilon(e)=-1/4 is universal if C is computed along the symmetric (longitudinal) axis. The origin of the nonuniversalities of the prefactors is discussed in the renormalization-group framework where a solvable toy model is considered. Moreover, we relate the average correlation function with the average entanglement entropy, whose amplitude has been recently shown to be universal. The nonuniversalities of the prefactors are shown to contribute only to surface terms of the entropy. Finally, we discuss the experimental relevance of our results by computing the structure factor whose scaling properties, interestingly, depend on the correlation prefactors.

2007

Thermodynamic properties of highly frustrated quantum spin ladders: Influence of many-particle bound states

Frédéric Mila, Bruce Normand

Quantum antiferromagnets have proven to be some of the cleanest realizations available for theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies of quantum fluctuation effects. At finite temperatures, however, the additional effects of thermal fluctuations in the restricted phase space of a low-dimensional system have received much less attention, particularly the situation in frustrated quantum magnets, where the excitations may be complex collective (bound or even fractionalized) modes. We investigate this problem by studying the thermodynamic properties of the frustrated two-leg S=12 spin ladder, with particular emphasis on the fully frustrated case. We present numerical results for the magnetic specific heat and susceptibility, obtained from exact diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo studies, which we show can be rendered free of the sign problem even in a strongly frustrated system and which allow us to reach unprecedented sizes of L=200 ladder rungs. We find that frustration effects cause an unconventional evolution of the thermodynamic response across the full parameter regime of the model. However, close to the first-order transition they cause a highly anomalous reduction in temperature scales with no concomitant changes in the gap; the specific heat shows a very narrow peak at very low energies and the susceptibility rises abruptly at extremely low temperatures. Unusually, the two quantities have different gaps over an extended region of the parameter space. We demonstrate that these results reflect the presence of large numbers of multiparticle bound-state excitations, whose energies fall below the one-triplon gap in the transition region.

2016

Schwinger-boson approach to the kagome antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions: Phase diagram and dynamical structure factors

We have obtained the zero-temperature phase diagram of the kagomé antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in Schwinger-boson mean-field theory. We find quantum phase transitions (first or second order) between different topological spin-liquid and Néel-ordered phases (either the √3×√3 state or the so-called Q=0 state). In the regime of small Schwinger-boson density, the results bear some resemblances with exact diagonalization results and we briefly discuss some issues of the mean-field treatment. We calculate the equal-time structure factor (and its angular average to allow for a direct comparison with experiments on powder samples), which extends earlier work on the classical kagomé to the quantum regime. We also discuss the dynamical structure factors of the topological spin-liquid and the Néel-ordered phases.

2010