No Arabic abstract
The existence of a gapped chiral spin liquid has been recently suggested in the vicinity of the metal-insulator transition of the Hubbard model on the triangular lattice, by intensive density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations [A. Szasz, J. Motruk, M.P. Zaletel, and J.E. Moore, Phys. Rev. X ${bf 10}$, 021042 (2020)]. Here, we report the results obtained within the variational Monte Carlo technique based upon Jastrow-Slater wave functions, implemented with backflow correlations. As in DMRG calculations, we consider $N$-leg cylinders. In highly-frustrated cases, i.e., in the presence of a next-nearest neighbor hopping with $N=4$, a chiral spin liquid emerges between the metal and the insulator with magnetic quasi-long-range order. Within our approach, the chiral state is gapped and breaks the reflection symmetry. By contrast, for the less frustrated case with $N=6$, the chiral spin liquid is not the state with the lowest variational energy and the results are very similar to the one obtained on two-dimensional clusters [L.F. Tocchio, A. Montorsi, and F. Becca, Phys. Rev. B ${bf 102}$, 115150 (2020)].
We study the ground state properties of the Hubbard model on three-leg triangular cylinders using large-scale density-matrix renormalization group simulations. At half-filling, we identify an intermediate gapless spin liquid phase between a metallic phase at weak coupling and Mott insulating dimer phase at strong interaction, which has one gapless spin mode and algebraic spin-spin correlations but exponential decay scalar chiral-chiral correlations. Upon light doping the gapless spin liquid, the system exhibits power-law charge-density-wave (CDW) correlations but short-range single-particle, spin-spin, and chiral-chiral correlations. Similar to CDW correlations, the superconducting correlations are also quasi-long-ranged but oscillate in sign as a function of distance, which is consistent with the striped pair-density wave. When further doping the gapless spin liquid phase or doping the dimer order phase, another phase takes over, which has similar CDW correlations but all other correlations decay exponentially.
The interplay between spin frustration and charge fluctuation gives rise to an exotic quantum state in the intermediate-interaction regime of the half-filled triangular-lattice Hubbard (TLU) model, while the nature of the state is under debate. Using the density matrix renormalization group with SU(2)$_{rm{spin}} otimes $U(1)$_{rm{charge}}$ symmetries implemented, we study the TLU model defined on the long cylinder geometry with circumference $W=4$. A gapped quantum spin liquid, with on-site interaction $9 lesssim U / t lesssim 10.75$, is identified between the metallic and the antiferromagnetic Mott insulating phases. In particular, we find that this spin liquid develops a robust long-range spin scalar-chiral correlation as the system length $L$ increases, which unambiguously unveils the spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. In addition, the large degeneracy of the entanglement spectrum supports symmetry fractionalization and spinon edge modes in the obtained ground state. The possible origin of chiral order in this intermediate spin liquid and its relation to the rotonlike excitations have also been discussed.
Guided by the recent discovery of SU($2$)$_1$ and SU($3$)$_1$ chiral spin liquids on the square lattice, we propose a family of generic time-reversal symmetry breaking SU($N$)-symmetric models, of arbitrary $Nge 2$, in the fundamental representation, with short-range interactions extending at most to triangular units. The evidence for Abelian chiral spin liquid (CSL) phases in such models is obtained via a combination of complementary numerical methods such as exact diagonalizations (ED), infinite density matrix renormalization group (iDMRG) and infinite Projected Entangled Pair State (iPEPS). Extensive ED on small clusters are carried out up to $N=10$, revealing (in some range of the Hamiltonian parameters) a bulk gap and ground-state degeneracy on periodic clusters as well as linear dispersing chiral modes on the edge of open systems, whose level counting is in full agreement with SU($N$)$_1$ Wess-Zumino-Witten conformal field theory predictions. Using an SU($N$)-symmetric version of iDMRG for $N=2,3$ and $4$ to compute entanglement spectra on (infinitely-long) cylinders in all topological sectors, we provide additional unambiguous signatures of the SU($N$)$_1$ character of the chiral liquids. An SU($4$)-symmetric chiral PEPS is shown to provide a good variational ansatz of the $N=4$ ground state, constructed in a manner similar to its $N=2$ and $N=3$ analogs. The entanglement spectra in all topological sectors of an infinitely long cylinder reveal specific features of the chiral edge modes originating from the PEPS holographic bulk-edge correspondence. Results for the correlation lengths suggest some form of long-range correlations in SU($N$) chiral PEPS, which nevertheless do not preclude an accurate representation of the gapped SU($N$) CSL phases. Finally, we discuss the possible observation of such Abelian CSL in ultracold atom setups.
We study the nearest neighbor $XXZ$ Heisenberg quantum antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice. Here we consider the effects of several perturbations: a) a chirality term, b) a Dzyaloshinski-Moriya term, and c) a ring-exchange type term on the bowties of the kagome lattice, and inquire if they can suppport chiral spin liquids as ground states. The method used to study these Hamiltonians is a flux attachment transformation that maps the spins on the lattice to fermions coupled to a Chern-Simons gauge field on the kagome lattice. This transformation requires us to consistently define a Chern-Simons term on the kagome lattice. We find that the chirality term leads to a chiral spin liquid even in the absence of an uniform magnetic field, with an effective spin Hall conductance of $sxy = frac{1}{2}$ in the regime of $XY$ anisotropy. The Dzyaloshinkii-Moriya term also leads a similar chiral spin liquid but only when this term is not too strong. An external magnetic field also has the possibility of giving rise to additional plateaus which also behave like chiral spin liquids in the $XY$ regime. Finally, we consider the effects of a ring-exchange term and find that, provided its coupling constant is large enough, it may trigger a phase transition into a chiral spin liquid by the spontaneous breaking of time-reversal invariance.
We suggest a class of two-dimensional lattice spin Hamiltonians describing non-Abelian SU(2) chiral spin liquids - spin-analogues of fractional non-Abelian quantum Hall states- with gapped bulk and gapless chiral edge excitations described by the SU(2)$_n$ Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten conformal field theory. The models are constructed from an array of a generalized spin-$n/2$ ladders with multi-spin exchange interaction which are coupled by isolated spins. Such models allow a controllable analytic treatment starting from the one-dimensional limit and are characterized by a bulk gap and non-Abelian SU(2)$_n$ gapless edge excitations.