Time-reversal symmetry breaking Abelian chiral spin liquid in Mott phases of three-component fermions on the triangular lattice

We provide numerical evidence in favor of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and the concomitant appearance of an Abelian chiral spin liquid for three-component fermions on the triangular lattice described by an SU(3) symmetric Hubbard model with hopping amplitude -t (t > 0) and on-site interaction U. This chiral phase is stabilized in the Mott phase with one particle per site in the presence of a uniform pi flux per plaquette, and in the Mott phase with two particles per site without any flux. Our approach relies on effective spin models derived in the strong-coupling limit in powers of t/U for general SU(N) and arbitrary uniform charge flux per plaquette, which are subsequently studied using exact diagonalizations and variational Monte Carlo simulations for N = 3, as well as exact diagonalizations of the SU(3) Hubbard model on small clusters. Up to third order in t/U, and for the time-reversal symmetric cases (flux 0 or pi), the low-energy description is given by the J-K model with Heisenberg coupling J and real ring exchange K. The phase diagram in the full J-K parameter range contains, apart from three already known, magnetically long-range ordered phases, two previously unreported phases: (i) a lattice nematic phase breaking the lattice rotation symmetry and (ii) a spontaneous time-reversal and parity symmetry breaking Abelian chiral spin liquid. For the Hubbard model, an investigation that includes higher-order itinerancy effects supports the presence of a phase transition inside the insulating region, occurring at (t/U)(c) approximate to 0.07 [(U/t)(c) approximate to 13] between the three-sublattice magnetically ordered phase at small t/U and this Abelian chiral spin liquid.

Effective spin couplings in the Mott insulator of the honeycomb lattice Hubbard model

Motivated by the recent discovery of a spin-liquid phase for the Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice at half-filling (Meng et al 2010 Nature 88 487), we apply both perturbative and non-perturbative techniques to derive effective spin Hamiltonians describing the low-energy physics of the Mottinsulating phase of the system. Exact diagonalizations of the so-derived models on small clusters are performed, in order to assess the quality of the effective low-energy theory in the spin-liquid regime. We show that six-spin interactions on the elementary loop of the honeycomb lattice are the dominant sub-leading effective couplings. A minimal spin model is shown to reproduce most of the energetic properties of the Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice in its spin-liquid phase. Surprisingly, a more elaborate effective low-energy spin model obtained by a systematic graph expansion rather disagrees beyond a certain point with the numerical results for the Hubbard model at intermediate couplings.

Iop Publishing Ltd2012

Spin-Orbital Quantum Liquid on the Honeycomb Lattice

Miklos Lajko, Frédéric Mila, Karlo Penc

The main characteristic of Mott insulators, as compared to band insulators, is to host low-energy spin fluctuations. In addition, Mott insulators often possess orbital degrees of freedom when crystal-field levels are partially filled. While in the majority of Mott insulators, spins and orbitals develop long-range order, the possibility for the ground state to be a quantum liquid opens new perspectives. In this paper, we provide clear evidence that the spin-orbital SU(4) symmetric Kugel-Khomskii model of Mott insulators on the honeycomb lattice is a quantum spin-orbital liquid. The absence of any form of symmetry breaking-lattice or SU(N)-is supported by a combination of semiclassical and numerical approaches: flavor-wave theory, tensor network algorithm, and exact diagonalizations. In addition, all properties revealed by these methods are very accurately accounted for by a projected variational wave function based on the pi-flux state of fermions on the honeycomb lattice at 1/4 filling. In that state, correlations are algebraic because of the presence of a Dirac point at the Fermi level, suggesting that the symmetric Kugel-Khomskii model on the honeycomb lattice is an algebraic quantum spin-orbital liquid. This model provides an interesting starting point to understanding the recently discovered spin-orbital-liquid behavior of Ba3CuSb2O9. The present results also suggest the choice of optical lattices with honeycomb geometry in the search for quantum liquids in ultracold four-color fermionic atoms.

2012

Lattice symmetries and regular magnetic orders in classical frustrated antiferromagnets

We consider some classical and frustrated lattice spin models with global O(3) spin symmetry. No general analytical method to find a ground state exists when the spin dependence of the Hamiltonian is more than quadratic (i.e., beyond the Heisenberg model) and/or when the lattice has more than one site per unit cell. To deal with these cases, we introduce a family of variational spin configurations, dubbed “regular magnetic orders” (RMO’s), which respect all the lattice symmetries modulo global O(3) spin transformations (rotations and/or spin flips). The construction of these states is made explicit through a group-theoretical approach, and all the RMO’s on the square, triangular, honeycomb, and kagome lattices are listed. Their equal-time structure factors and powder averages are shown for comparison with experiments. Well known Néel states with one, two, or three sublattices on various lattices are RMO’s, but the RMO’s also encompass exotic nonplanar states with cubic, tetrahedral, or cuboctahedral geometry of the T=0 order parameter. Regardless of the details of the Hamiltonian (with the same symmetry group), a large fraction of these RMO’s are energetically stationary with respect to small deviations of the spins. In fact, these RMO’s appear as exact ground states in large domains of parameter space of simple models that we have considered. As examples, we display the variational phase diagrams of the J1-J2-J3 Heisenberg model on all the previous lattices as well as that of the J1-J2-K ring-exchange model on square and triangular lattices.

2011