TY - JOUR
T1 - Quantum spin liquid in the semiclassical regime
AU - Rousochatzakis, Ioannis
AU - Sizyuk, Yuriy
AU - Perkins, Natalia B.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) have been at the forefront of correlated electron research ever since their proposal in 1973, and the realization that they belong to the broader class of intrinsic topological orders. According to received wisdom, QSLs can arise in frustrated magnets with low spin S, where strong quantum fluctuations act to destabilize conventional, magnetically ordered states. Here, we present a Z 2 QSL ground state that appears already in the semiclassical, large-S limit. This state has both topological and symmetry-related ground-state degeneracy, and two types of gaps, a "magnetic flux" gap that scales linearly with S and an "electric charge" gap that drops exponentially in S. The magnet is the spin-S version of the spin-1/2 Kitaev honeycomb model, which has been the subject of intense studies in correlated electron systems with strong spin-orbit coupling, and in optical lattice realizations with ultracold atoms.
AB - Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) have been at the forefront of correlated electron research ever since their proposal in 1973, and the realization that they belong to the broader class of intrinsic topological orders. According to received wisdom, QSLs can arise in frustrated magnets with low spin S, where strong quantum fluctuations act to destabilize conventional, magnetically ordered states. Here, we present a Z 2 QSL ground state that appears already in the semiclassical, large-S limit. This state has both topological and symmetry-related ground-state degeneracy, and two types of gaps, a "magnetic flux" gap that scales linearly with S and an "electric charge" gap that drops exponentially in S. The magnet is the spin-S version of the spin-1/2 Kitaev honeycomb model, which has been the subject of intense studies in correlated electron systems with strong spin-orbit coupling, and in optical lattice realizations with ultracold atoms.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-03934-1
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-03934-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 29686283
AN - SCOPUS:85045998050
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 1575
ER -