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 ${mathbb Z}_2$ topological phase. Supporting this assertion, a numerical study of the entanglement entropy in the sign free model shows a quantized topological contribution.
The $mathbb{Z}_2$ topological phase in the quantum dimer model on the Kagome-lattice is a candidate for the description of the low-energy physics of the anti-ferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the same lattice. We study the extend of the topological phase by interpolating between the exactly solvable parent Hamiltonian of the topological phase and an effective low-energy description of the Heisenberg model in terms of a quantum-dimer Hamiltonian. Therefore, we perform a perturbative treatment of the low-energy excitations in the topological phase including free and interacting quasi-particles. We find a phase transition out of the topological phase far from the Heisenberg point. The resulting phase is characterized by a spontaneously broken rotational symmetry and a unit cell involving six sites.
We construct a short-range resonating valence-bond state (RVB) on the ruby lattice, using projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) with bond dimension $D=3$. By introducing non-local moves to the dimer patterns on the torus, we distinguish four distinct sectors in the space of dimer coverings, which is a signature of the topological nature of the RVB wave function. Furthermore, by calculating the reduced density matrix of a bipartition of the RVB state on an infinite cylinder and exploring its entanglement entropy, we confirm the topological nature of the RVB wave function by obtaining non-zero topological contribution, $gamma=-rm{ln} 2$, consistent with that of a $mathbb{Z}_2$ topological quantum spin liquid. We also calculate the ground-state energy of the spin-$frac{1}{2}$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the ruby lattice and compare it with the RVB energy. Finally, we construct a quantum-dimer model for the ruby lattice and discuss it as a possible parent Hamiltonian for the RVB wave function.
The kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet is a leading candidate in the search for a spin system with a quantum spin-liquid ground state. The nature of its ground state remains a matter of great debate. We conducted 17-O single crystal NMR measurements of the S=1/2 kagome lattice in herbertsmithite ZnCu$_3$(OH)$_6$Cl$_2$, which is known to exhibit a spinon continuum in the spin excitation spectrum. We demonstrate that the intrinsic local spin susceptibility $chi_{kagome}$ deduced from the 17-O NMR frequency shift asymptotes to zero below temperature T ~ 0.03 J, where J ~ 200 K is the Cu-Cu super-exchange interaction. Combined with the magnetic field dependence of $chi_{kagome}$ we observed at low temperatures, these results imply that the kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet has a spin-liquid ground state with a finite gap.
We continue recent efforts to discover examples of deconfined quantum criticality in one-dimensional models. In this work we investigate the transition between a $mathbb{Z}_3$ ferromagnet and a phase with valence bond solid (VBS) order in a spin chain with $mathbb{Z}_3timesmathbb{Z}_3$ global symmetry. We study a model with alternating projective representations on the sites of the two sublattices, allowing the Hamiltonian to connect to an exactly solvable point having VBS order with the character of SU(3)-invariant singlets. Such a model does not admit a Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem typical of systems realizing deconfined critical points. Nevertheless, we find evidence for a direct transition from the VBS phase to a $mathbb{Z}_3$ ferromagnet. Finite-entanglement scaling data are consistent with a second-order or weakly first-order transition. We find in our parameter space an integrable lattice model apparently describing the phase transition, with a very long, finite, correlation length of 190878 lattice spacings. Based on exact results for this model, we propose that the transition is extremely weakly first order, and is part of a family of DQCP described by walking of renormalization group flows.
Magnetic susceptibility, NMR, muSR, and inelastic neutron scattering measurements show that kapellasite, Cu3Zn(OH)6Cl2, a geometrically frustrated spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnet polymorphous with the herbertsmithite mineral, is a gapless spin liquid with frustrated interactions showing unusual dynamic short-range correlations of non-coplanar cuboc2 type which persist down to 20 mK. The Hamiltonian is determined from a fit of a high-temperature series expansion to thermodynamical data. The experimental data are compared to theoretical calculations using the Schwinger-boson approach.