No Arabic abstract
The pseudofermion functional renormalization group (pf-FRG) is one of the few numerical approaches that has been demonstrated to quantitatively determine the ordering tendencies of frustrated quantum magnets in two and three spatial dimensions. The approach, however, relies on a number of presumptions and approximations, in particular the choice of pseudofermion decomposition and the truncation of an infinite number of flow equations to a finite set. Here we generalize the pf-FRG approach to SU(N)-spin systems with arbitrary N and demonstrate that the scheme becomes exact in the large-N limit. Numerically solving the generalized real-space renormalization group equations for arbitrary N, we can make a stringent connection between the physically most significant case of SU(2)-spins and more accessible SU(N) models. In a case study of the square-lattice SU(N) Heisenberg antiferromagnet, we explicitly demonstrate that the generalized pf-FRG approach is capable of identifying the instability indicating the transition into a staggered flux spin liquid ground state in these models for large, but finite values of N. In a companion paper (arXiv:1711.02183) we formulate a momentum-space pf-FRG approach for SU(N) spin models that allows us to explicitly study the large-N limit and access the low-temperature spin liquid phase.
In frustrated magnetism, making a stringent connection between microscopic spin models and macroscopic properties of spin liquids remains an important challenge. A recent step towards this goal has been the development of the pseudofermion functional renormalization group approach (pf-FRG) which, building on a fermionic parton construction, enables the numerical detection of the onset of spin liquid states as temperature is lowered. In this work, focusing on the SU(N) Heisenberg model at large N, we extend this approach in a way that allows us to directly enter the low-temperature spin liquid phase, and to probe its character. Our approach proceeds in momentum space, making it possible to keep the truncation minimalistic, while also avoiding the bias introduced by an explicit decoupling of the fermionic parton interactions into a given channel. We benchmark our findings against exact mean-field results in the large-N limit, and show that even without prior knowledge the pf-FRG approach identifies the correct mean-field decoupling channel. On a technical level, we introduce an alternative finite temperature regularization scheme that is necessitated to access the spin liquid ordered phase. In a companion paper arXiv:1711.02182 we present a different set of modifications of the pf-FRG scheme that allow us to study SU(N) Heisenberg models (using a real-space RG approach) for arbitrary values of N, albeit only up to the phase transition towards spin liquid physics.
We show that the N-patch functional renormalization group (pFRG), a theoretical method commonly applied for correlated electron systems, is unable to implement consistently the matrix element interference arising from strong momentum dependence in the Bloch state contents or the interaction vertices. We show that such a deficit could lead to results incompatible with checkable limits of weak and strong coupling. We propose that the pFRG could be improved by a better account of momentum conservation.
We investigate the infrared properties of SU(N)$_k$ conformal field theory perturbed by its adjoint primary field in 1+1 dimensions. The latter field theory is shown to govern the low-energy properties of various SU(N) spin chain problems. In particular, using a mapping onto k-leg SU(N) spin ladder, a massless renormalization group flow to SU(N)$_1$ criticality is predicted when N and k have no common divisor. The latter result extends the well-known massless flow between SU(2)$_k$ and SU(2)$_1$ Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten theories when k is odd in connection to the Haldanes conjecture on SU(2) Heisenberg spin chains. A direct approach is presented in the simplest N=3 and k=2 case to investigate the existence of this massless flow.
Building on advanced results on permutations, we show that it is possible to construct, for each irreducible representation of SU(N), an orthonormal basis labelled by the set of {it standard Young tableaux} in which the matrix of the Heisenberg SU(N) model (the quantum permutation of N-color objects) takes an explicit and extremely simple form. Since the relative dimension of the full Hilbert space to that of the singlet space on $n$ sites increases very fast with N, this formulation allows to extend exact diagonalizations of finite clusters to much larger values of N than accessible so far. Using this method, we show that, on the square lattice, there is long-range color order for SU(5), spontaneous dimerization for SU(8), and evidence in favor of a quantum liquid for SU(10).
We study two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnets with additional multi-spin interactions which can drive the system into a valence-bond solid state. For standard SU(2) spins, we consider both four- and six-spin interactions. We find continuous quantum phase transitions with the same critical exponents. Extending the symmetry to SU(N), we also find continuous transitions for N=3 and 4. In addition, we also study quantitatively the cross-over of the order-parameter symmetry from Z4 deep inside the valence-bond-solid phase to U(1) as the phase transition is approached.