In this work, a long-range resonating valence bond state is proposed as a variational wave function for the ground state of the $S=1/2$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice. Employing Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method, we show that the ground state energy obtained from such RVB wave function, lies well below the energy of the Néel state and compares very well to the energies evaluated from spin-wave theory and series expansion method. We also obtain the spin-spin correlation function along zig-zag and armchair directions and find that the two correlations are different, which indicates the anisotropic nature of the system. We compare our results with the square lattice and we show that although the quantum fluctuations on honeycomb lattice are much stronger, but do not completely destroy the magnetic order.
We show the chiral d-wave RVB state on honeycomb lattice stands as a natural generalization of the staggered flux phase on square lattice. Although the state is generated from a time reversal symmetry broken mean field ansatz, it actually represents a fully symmetric spin liquid state with a positive definite wave function in the sense of Marshall sign rule for unfrustrated antiferromagnets. The evolution of the state with the parameter $Δ/χ$ follows exactly the same manner as that of the staggered flux phase on square lattice. The critical pairing strength corresponding to the $π$-flux phase …
We study the ground state of the 4-leg spin ladder using a dimer-RVB ansatz and the Lanczos method. Besides the well known resonance mechanism between valence bond configurations we find novel interference effects among nearby resonances.
We relate the Z$_2$ gauge theory formalism of the Kitaev model to the SU(2) gauge theory of the resonating valence bond (RVB) physics. Further, we reformulate a known Jordan-Wigner transformation of Kitaev model on a torus in a general way that shows that it can be thought of as a Z$_2$ gauge fixing procedure. The conserved quantities simplify in terms of the gauge invariant Jordan-Wigner fermions, enabling us to construct exact eigen states and calculate physical quantities. We calculate the fermionic spectrum for flux free sector for different gauge field configurations and show that the gro…
We investigate the spin dynamics of the square-lattice spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet by means of an improved mean field Schwinger boson calculation. By identifying both, the long range Néel and the RVB-like components of the ground state, we propose an educated guess for the mean field triplet excitation consisting on a linear combination of local and bond spin flips to compute the dynamical structure factor. Our main result is that when this triplet excitation is optimized in such a way that the corresponding sum rule is fulfilled, we recover the low and high energy spectral weight feat…
We study the ground state phase diagram of the bilayer Heisenberg model on square lattice with a Bosonic RVB wave function. The wave function has the form of a Gutzwiller projected Schwinger Boson mean field ground state and involves two variational parameters. We find the wave function provides an accurate description of the system on both sides of the quantum phase transition. Especially, through the analysis of the spin structure factor, ground state fidelity susceptibility and the Binder moment ratio $Q_{2}$, a continuous transition from the antiferromagnetic ordered state to the quantum d…
We study the proposed plaquette-RVB (pRVB) state in the honeycomb lattice $J_1-J_2$ model with frustration arising from next-nearest neighbour interactions. Starting with the limit of decoupled hexagons, we develop a plaquette operator approach to describe the pRVB state and its low energy excitations. Our calculation clarifies that the putative pRVB state necessarily has f-wave symmetry - the plaquette wavefunction is an antisymmetric combination of the Kekulé structures. We estimate the plaquette ordering amplitude, ground state energy and spin gap as a function of $J_2/J_1$. The pRVB state …
We study the interplay between spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and Coulomb repulsion in a Hubbard model on a decorated honeycomb lattice which leads to a plethora of phases. While a quantum spin hall insulator is stable at weak Coulomb repulsion and moderate SOC, a semimetallic phase emerges at large SOC in a broad range of Coulomb repulsion. This semimetallic phase has topological properties not observed in conventional metals such as a finite, non-quantized spin Hall conductivity. At large Coulomb repulsion and negligible spin-orbit coupling, electronic correlations stabilize a resonance valence b…
The spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on an anisotropic triangular lattice is considered in the mean-field RVB approximation. The analytical estimates for the critical temperatures of the longitudinal s-RVB state (the upper one) and the 2D s-RVB state (the lower one) are obtained which fairly agree with the results of the previous numerical studies on this system. Analytical formulae for the magnetic susceptibility and the magnetic contribution to the specific heat capacity in the longitudinal s-RVB state are obtained which fairly reproduce the results of the numerical experiment concerning these phys…
We consider a family of SU(2)-symmetric Projected Entangled Paired States (PEPS) on the square lattice, defining colored-Resonating Valence Bond (RVB) states, to describe the quantum disordered phase of the $J_1-J_2$ frustrated Heisenberg model.For $J_2/J_1\sim 0.55$ we show the emergence of critical (algebraic) dimer-dimer correlations -- typical of Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) points of quantum dimer models on bipartite lattices -- while, simultaneously, the spin-spin correlation length remains short. Our findings are consistent with a spin liquid or a weak Valence Bond Crystal in the neighborhood …
Through Variational Monte Carlo simulation we show the d-wave RVB pairing in the Heisenberg model on triangular lattice can be better described in terms of a two component order parameter. The fully gapped chiral d-wave RVB state, which is predicted by the mean field theory to be the unique minimum of variational energy in the two dimensional representation space of d-wave pairing, is found to be actually a local maximum and the true minimum of energy is reached by the non-chiral $d_{xy}$ state with line nodes. We also find that the usual Gutzwiller approximation, which enjoys great success fo…
We present an approximation scheme for the calculation of the norm and energy of the nearest-neighbor-RVB state for the Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the 2D square lattice. The approximation leads to a systematic expansion of norm and energy, with the `expansion parameter' being the maximum length of loops taken into account in the calculation of energy and norm. The expansion converges well, the best estimate for the ground state energy/site is $-0.434473J$.
We study the quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice, which is expected to describe the singlet dynamics of frustrated Heisenberg models in phases where valence bond configurations dominate their physics. We find, in contrast to the square lattice, that there is a truly short ranged resonating valence bond (RVB) phase with no gapless collective excitations and with deconfined, gapped, spinons for a {\it finite} range of parameters. We also establish the presence of three crystalline phases in this system.
Using the Resonant Valence Bond (RVB) concept and the Schwinger-boson mean field approximation, we investigate a two dimensional anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnet. We find that increasing the coupling ratio ($α=J_{y}/J_{x}$), a disordered-ordered phase transition appears beyond a critical value ($α_{c}$). When $α>α_{c}$ there exists a finite $T_{N}$ beyond which an ordered-disordered phase transition occurs, while for $α<α_{c}$ there always exists a gap. Also we find that a decoupling temperature $T_{D}$ exists for 1D and 2D isotropic case, when $T$ approaches $T_{D}$ the RVB order parame…
We present an resonating valence bond (RVB) theory of superconductivity for the Hubbard--Heisenberg model on an anisotropic triangular lattice. We show that these calculations are consistent with the observed phase diagram of the half-filled layered organic superconductors, such as the beta, beta', kappa and lambda phases of (BEDT-TTF)_2X [bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene] and (BETS)_2X [bis(ethylenedithio)tetraselenafulvalene]. We find a first order transition from a Mott insulator to a d_{x^2-y^2} superconductor with a small superfluid stiffness and a pseudogap with d_{x^2-y^2} symmetry…
The Hubbard model in the strong-coupling regime is studied by the Kondo-lattice theory. If no symmetry is broken at a sufficiently low temperature in sufficiently low dimensions, an electron liquid is stabilized by the Fock-type exchange effect of the superexchange interaction. Since the stabilization mechanism is none other than the resonating-valence-bond (RVB) mechanism, the electron liquid is none other than an RVB electron liquid. The RVB electron liquid in the Hubbard model is adiabatically connected to the RVB spin liquid in the Heisenberg model.
We investigate the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice with breathing anisotropy (i.e. with weak and strong triangular units), constructing an improved simplex Resonating Valence Bond (RVB) ansatz by successive applications (up to three times) of local quantum gates which implement a filtering operation on the bare nearest-neighbor RVB state. The resulting Projected Entangled Pair State involves a small number of variational parameters (only one at each level of application) and preserves full lattice and spin-rotation symmetries. Despite its simple analytic form, the sim…
{Extensive calculations in the short-range RVB (Resonating valence bond) subspace on both the trimerized and the regular (non-trimerized) Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice show that short-range dimer singlets capture the specific low-energy features of both models. In the trimerized case the singlet spectrum splits into bands in which the average number of dimers lying on one type of bonds is fixed. These results are in good agreement with the mean field solution of an effective model recently introduced. For the regular model one gets a continuous, gapless spectrum, in qualitative agreem…
The self-consistency equations for the independent order parameters as well as the free energy expression for the mean-field RVB model of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg Hamiltonian on the anisotropic triangular lattice is considered in the quasi-one-dimensional approximation. The solutions of the self-consistency equations in the zero-temperature limit are in fair agreement with the previous numerical analysis of the same model by other authors. In particular, the transition from the ungapped 1D-RVB state to the gapped 2D-RVB state occurs at an arbitrarily weak transversal exchange ($J_{2}\rightarrow…
The spin-1/2 Heisenberg kagome antiferromagnet is one of the paradigmatic playgrounds for frustrated quantum magnetism, with an extensive number of competing resonating valence bond (RVB) states emerging at low energies, including gapped and gapless spin liquids and valence bond crystals. Here we revisit the crossover from this quantum RVB phase to a semiclassical regime brought about by anisotropic Kitaev interactions, and focus on the precise mechanisms underpinning this crossover. To this end, we introduce a simple parametrization of the classical ground states (GSs) in terms of emergent Is…
Searching for spin liquids on the honeycomb J1-J2 Heisenberg model has been attracting great attention in the past decade. In this Paper we investigate the topological properties of the J1-J2 Heisenberg model by introducing nearest-neighbour and next-nearest-neighbour bond parameters. We find that there exist two topologically different phases in the spin disordered regime 0.2<J2/J1<0.5: for J2/J1<0.32, the system is a zero-flux spin liquid which is topological trivial and gapless; for J2/J1>0.32, it is a pi-flux chiral spin liquid, which is topological nontrivial and gapped. These results sug…
Using the density-matrix renormalization group, we determine the phase diagram of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a honeycomb lattice with a nearest neighbor interaction J1 and a frustrating, next-neighbor exchange J2. As frustration increases, the ground state exhibits Neel, plaquette and dimer orders, with critical points at J2/J1 = 0.22 and 0.35. We observe that both the spin gap and the corresponding order parameters vanish continuously at both the critical points, indicating the presence of deconfined quantum criticality.
The Kitaev-Heisenberg model defined on both honeycomb and triangular lattices has been studied intensively in recent years as a possible model to describe spin-orbital physics in iridium oxides. In the model, there are many phases characteristic for each lattice. However, there is no study how the phases in the two lattices merge each other when geometry changes from honeycomb lattice to triangular lattice. We investigate the ground state of the Kitaev-Heisenberg model defined on the system connecting the honeycomb and triangular lattices, named a honeycomb-triangular lattice. We obtain a grou…
Within the linear flavor-wave theory, we show that, caused by quantum order-by-disorder mechanism, the spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model defined on a honeycomb lattice can spontaneously develop a columnar dimer order with a non-bipartite structure. The low-lying excitations above this novel ground state form several flat bands separated by nonzero energy gaps. Our results suggest that the quantum phase transition separating this dimerized phase with the nearby Néel-order one may be of first order.
We study the ground-state phase diagram of the spin-1/2 J1-J2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice with an accurate Bosonic resonating valence-bond (RVB) wave function. In contrast to the RVB ansatz based on Schwinger Fermions, the representation based on Schwinger Bosons, supplemented by a variational Monte Carlo technique enforcing the exact projection onto the physical subspace, is able to describe a fully gapped spin liquid in the strongly frustrated regime. In particular, a fully symmetric Z2 spin liquid is stable between two antiferromagnetic phases; a continuous transition at J2=0.4J1…
We construct a class of projected entangled pair states (PEPS) which is exactly the resonating valence bond (RVB) wavefunctions endowed with both short range and long range valence bonds. With an energetically preferred RVB pattern, the wavefunction is simplified to live in a one parameter variational space. We tune this variational parameter to minimize the energy for the frustrated spin 1/2 J1-J2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the square lattice. Taking a cylindrical geometry, we are able to construct four topological sectors with even or odd number of fluxes penetrating the cylinder …
We derive and study a spin one-half Hamiltonian on a honeycomb lattice describing the exchange interactions between Ir$^{4+}$ ions in a family of layered iridates $A_2$IrO$_3$ ($A$=Li,Na). Depending on the microscopic parameters, the Hamiltonian interpolates between the Heisenberg and exactly solvable Kitaev models. Exact diagonalization and a complementary spin-wave analysis reveal the presence of an extended spin-liquid phase near the Kitaev limit and a conventional Néel state close to the Heisenberg limit. The two phases are separated by an unusual stripy antiferromagnetic state, which is t…
We study the extended Kitaev-Heisenberg (EKH) quantum spin model by adding bond-dependent off-diagonal Heisenberg term into the original KH model, which was recently proposed to describe the honeycomb Iridates. A rigorous mathematical mapping of spin operators reveals the intrinsic symmetry of the model Hamiltonian. By employing an unbiased numerical entanglement renormalization method based on tensor network ansatz, we obtain the global phase diagram containing eight distinct quantum phases. By using the dual mapping of spin operators, each of the individual magnetic phase in the global phase…
We analyze the biquadratic bilinear Heisenberg magnet on a honeycomb lattice via Schwinger boson formalism. Due to their vulnerability to quantum fluctuations, non conventional lattices (kagome, triangular and honeycomb for example) have been cited as candidates to support spin liquid states. Such states without long range order at zero temperature are known in one-dimensional spin models but their existence in higher dimensional systems is still under debate. Biquadratic interaction is responsible for various possibilities and phases as it is well-founded for one-dimensional systems. Here we …
We consider the quasi-two-dimensional pseudo-spin-1/2 Kitaev - Heisenberg model proposed for A2IrO3 (A=Li, Na) compounds. The spin-wave excitation spectrum, the sublattice magnetization, and the transition temperatures are calculated in the random phase approximation (RPA) for four different ordered phases, observed in the parameter space of the model: antiferomagnetic, stripe, ferromagnetic, and zigzag phases. The Néel temperature and temperature dependence of the sublattice magnetization are compared with the experimental data on Na2IrO3.
We study the Kitaev-Heisenberg model with spin-1 local degree of freedom on a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice numerically by density matrix renormalization group method. By tuning the relative value of the Kitaev and Heisenberg exchange couplings, we obtain the whole phase diagram with two spin liquid phases and four symmetry broken phases. We identify that the spin liquid phases are gapless by calculating the central charge at the pure Kitaev points without Heisenberg interaction. Comparing to its spin-1/2 counterpart, the position and number of gapless modes of the spin-1 case are quite di…
We have explored the hidden symmetries of a generic four-parameter nearest-neighbor spin model, allowed in honeycomb lattice compounds under trigonal compression. Our method utilizes a systematic algorithm to identify all dual transformations of the model that map the Hamiltonian on itself, changing the parameters and providing exact links between different points in its parameter space. We have found the complete set of points of hidden SU(2) symmetry at which seemingly highly anisotropic model can be mapped back on the Heisenberg model and inherits therefore its properties such as the presen…
We present a spin-rotation-invariant Green-function theory for the dynamic spin susceptibility in the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a stacked honeycomb lattice. Employing a generalized mean-field approximation for arbitrary temperatures, the thermodynamic quantities (two-spin correlation functions, internal energy, magnetic susceptibility, staggered magnetization, N'eel temperature, correlation length) and the spin-excitation spectrum are calculated by solving a coupled system of self-consistency equations for the correlation functions. The temperature dependence of the magnet…
Using the density matrix renormalization group, we investigate the $S=1/2$ Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with first- ($J_1$) and second-neighbor ($J_2$) interactions. We are able to study long open cylinders with widths up to 12 lattice spacings. For $J_2/J_1$ near 0.3, we find an apparently paramagnetic phase, bordered by an antiferromagnetic phase for $J_2\lesssim 0.26$ and by a valence bond crystal for $J_2\gtrsim 0.36$. The longest correlation length that we find in this intermediate phase is for plaquette valence bond (PVB) order. This correlation length grows strongly with cy…
The topologically nontrivial magnetic phase with a $Z_2$-vortex (Z$_2$V) lattice is investigated by simulation in the Kitaev-Heisenberg honeycomb model expanded by considering the second- and third-nearest-neighbor Heisenberg interactions ($J_{H2}$ and $J_{H3}$). On the parameter region of the Z$_2$V phase, a gradual modulation of vortex density is observed, together with a transition from single-Z$_2$V to triple-Z$_2$V state driven by the variation of frustration. Additionally, $Z_2$ vortices are arranged in different manners on the whole honeycomb structure for these two types of Z$_2$V stat…
We study the ground state of the 1D Kitaev-Heisenberg (KH) model using the density-matrix renormalization group and Lanczos exact diagonalization methods. We obtain a rich ground-state phase diagram as a function of the ratio between Heisenberg ($J=\cosϕ)$ and Kitaev ($K=\sinϕ$) interactions. Depending on the ratio, the system exhibits four long-range ordered states: ferromagnetic-$z$ , ferromagnetic-$xy$, staggered-$xy$, Néel-$z$, and two liquid states: Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid and spiral-$xy$. The two Kitaev points $ϕ=\fracπ{2}$ and $ϕ=\frac{3π}{2}$ are singular. The $ϕ$-dependent phase dia…
We investigate the non magnetic phase of the spin-half frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the square lattice using exact diagonalization (up to 36 sites) and quantum Monte Carlo techniques (up to 144 sites). The spin gap and the susceptibilities for the most important crystal symmetry breaking operators are computed. A genuine and somehow unexpected `plaquette RVB', with spontaneously broken translation symmetry and no broken rotation symmetry, comes out from our numerical simulations as the most plausible ground state for $J_2/J_1 \simeq 0.5 $.
We have precisely determined the ground state phase diagram of the quantum spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice using the tensor renormalization group method. We find that the ferromagnetic, ferroquadrupolar, and a large part of the antiferromagnetic phases are stable against quantum fluctuations. However, around the phase where the ground state is antiferroquadrupolar ordered in the classical limit, quantum fluctuations suppress completely all magnetic orders, leading to a plaquette order phase which breaks the lattice symmetry but preserves the spin SU(2) sym…
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 …
A range of honeycomb-lattice compounds has been proposed and investigated in the search for a topological Kitaev spin liquid. However, sizable Heisenberg interactions and additional symmetry-allowed exchange anisotropies in the magnetic Hamiltonian of these potential Kitaev materials push them away from the pure Kitaev spin-liquid state. Particularly the Kitaev-to-Heisenberg coupling ratio is essential in this respect. With the help of advanced quantum-chemistry methods, we explore how the magnetic coupling ratios depend on pressure in several honeycomb compounds (Na$_2$IrO$_3$, $β$-Li$_2$IrO$…
We study S=1/2 Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with first and second neighbor antiferromagnetic exchange (J_{1}-J_{2} model), employing exact diagonalization in both S_z=0 basis and nearest neighbor singlet valence bond (NNVB) basis. We find that for 0.2<J_2/J_1<0.3, NNVB basis gives a proper description of the ground state in comparison with the exact results. By analyzing the dimer-dimer as well as plaquette-plaquette correlations and also defining appropriate structure factors, we investigate possible symmetry breaking states as the candidate for the ground state in the frustrated…
We study a spin model on honeycomb lattice with two types of Heisenberg exchange couplings, $J$ and $\tilde J$, where $J$ is for the conventional spin and and $\tilde J$ for rotated spin. When $\tilde J=0$, this is the conventional Heisenberg model. When J=0, the system is either in a stripy antiferromagnetic order($\tilde J<0$, ferromagnetic for rotated spin) or a zig-zag antiferromagnetic order ($\tilde J>0$, antiferromagnetic for rotated spin). The competition between two ferromagnetic orders or two antiferromagnetic orders induces Kitaev's spin liquid phase characterized by the exactly sol…
We find that the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the Kagome lattice with nearest neighboring exchange coupling(NN-KAFH) belongs to a continuous family of fully-frustrated Heisenberg model on the Kagome lattice, which has no preferred classical ordering pattern. The model within this family consists of the first, second and the third neighboring exchange coupling $J_{1}$, $J_{2}$, and $J_{3}$, with $J_{2}=J_{3}$. We find that when $-J_{1}\leq J_{2}=J_{3}\leq 0.2J_{1}$, the lowest band of $J(\mathbf{q})$, namely, the Fourier transform of the exchange coupling, is totally non-dispersive. Ex…
We study magnetically ordered phases and their phase boundaries in the $J_1-J_2-J_3$ Heisenberg models on the honeycomb lattice using series expansions around Néel and different colinear and non-colinear magnetic states. An Ising anisotropy ($λ=J_{\perp}/J_z\ne 1$) is introduced and ground state energy and magnetization order parameter are calculated as a power seies expansion in $λ$. Series extrapolation methods are used to study properties for the Heisenberg model ($λ=1$). We find that at large $J_3$ ($>0.6$) there is a first order transition between Néel and columnar states, in agreement wi…
The coupled cluster method (CCM) is employed to very high orders of approximation to study the ground-state (GS) properties of the spin-$s$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet (with isotropic interactions, all of equal strength, between nearest-neighbour pairs only) on the honeycomb lattice. We calculate with high accuracy the complete set of GS parameters that fully describes the low-energy behaviour of the system, in terms of an effective magnon field theory, viz., the energy per spin, the magnetic order parameter (i.e., the sublattie magnetization), the spin stiffness and the zero-field (uniform, tr…
Motivated by the rich physics of honeycomb magnetic materials, we obtain the phase diagram and analyze magnetic properties of the spin-1/2 and spin-1 J1-J2-J3 Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice. Based on the SU(2) and SU(3) symmetry representations of the Schwinger boson approach, which treats disordered spin liquids and magnetically ordered phases on an equal footing, we obtain the complete phase diagrams in the (J2,J3)plane. This is achieved using a fully unrestricted approach which does not assume any pre-defined Ansatze. For S=1/2, we find a quantum spin liquid (QSL) stabilized betw…
The spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the distorted honeycomb (DHC) lattice is studied by means of the tensor renormalization group method. It is unveiled that the system has a quantum phase transition of second-order between the gapped quantum dimer phase and a collinear Neel phase at the critical point of coupling ratio α_{c} = 0.54, where the quantum critical exponents ν= 0.69(2) and γ= 1.363(8) are obtained. The quantum criticality is found to fall into the O(3) universality class. A ground-state phase diagram in the field-coupling ratio plane is proposed, where the phases such as the…
We study the nearest neighboring spin-1/2 Kitaev-Heisenberg-Gamma ($KJΓ$) model on the honeycomb lattice in the parameter region of ferromagnetic (FM) Kitaev and antiferromagnetic (AFM) Heisenberg couplings relevant for honeycomb iridates, using a coupled-chain analysis. Starting from the gapless Luttinger liquid phase of a decoupled $KJΓ$ chain, the inter-chain interactions in the two-dimensional model is treated within a self-consistent mean field approach based on the Luttinger liquid theory. In the FM Gamma region, our analysis recovers the reported 120$^\circ$ magnetic order, previously o…
We examine the thermal properties of the spin-1 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the honeycomb lattice in the presence of an easy-plane single-ion anisotropy as well as the effects of an additional weak in-plane easy-axis anisotropy. In particular, using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we analyze the scaling of the correlation length near the thermal phase transition into the ordered phase. This allows us to quantify the temperature regime above the critical point in which -- in spite of the additional in-plane easy-axis anisotropy -- characteristic easy-plane physics, such as near a…
We study a generalized honeycomb lattice spin-1/2 Heisenberg model with nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic 2-spin exchange, and competing 4-spin interactions which serve to stabilize a staggered dimer state which breaks lattice rotational symmetry. Using a combination of quantum Monte Carlo numerics, spin wave theory, and bond operator theory, we show that this model undergoes a strong first-order transition between a Neel state and a staggered dimer state upon increasing the strength of the 4-spin interactions. We attribute the strong first order character of this transition to the spinless n…
We find that the best RVB state of the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model(spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ KAFH) is described by a $Z_{2}$ gapped mean field ansatz, which hosts a mean field spinon dispersion very different from that of the widely studied $U(1)$ Dirac spin liquid state. However, we find that the physical spin fluctuation spectrum calculated from the Gutzwiller projected RPA(GRPA) theory above such an RVB state is actually gapless and is almost identical to that above the $U(1)$ Dirac spin liquid state. We find that such a peculiar behavior can be attributed to the u…
In this paper, we investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the $S=1/2$ Heisenberg-$Γ$ model on a honeycomb lattice by dimer series expansion and exact diagonalization. We focus on the effects of the anisotropy of the interactions; by tuning the coupling constants, the system changes between the isolated dimer and the spin-chain models. We find that, in the spin-chain limit, there are three kinds of states: a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid and two magnetically long-range-ordered states. All three states become two-dimensional long-range ordered states by the infinitesimal interchain interaction…
A number of topological nodes including Dirac, quadratic and triple band touching points as well as a pair of degenerate Dirac line nodes are found to emerge in the triplet plaquette excitations of the frustrated spin-1/2 $J_1$-$J_2$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg honeycomb model when the ground state of the system lies in a spin-disordered plaquette-valence-bond-solid phase. A six-spin plaquette operator theory of this honeycomb model has been developed for this purpose by using the eigenstates of an isolated Heisenberg hexagonal plaquette. Spin-1/2 operators are thus expressed in the Fock spac…
We investigate the ground-state and finite-temperature properties of the bond-random $s=1/2$ Heisenberg model on a honeycomb lattice with frustrated nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic interactions, $J_1$ and $J_2$, by the exact diagonalization and the Hams--de Raedt methods. The ground-state phase diagram of the model is constructed in the randomness versus the frustration ($J_2/J_1$) plane, with the aim of clarifying the effects of randomness and frustration in stabilizing a variety of distinct phases. We find that the randomness induces the gapless quantum spin liquid (QSL)…
We describe a "master equation" analysis for the bond amplitudes h(r) of an RVB wavefunction. Starting from any initial guess, h(r) evolves (in a manner dictated by the spin hamiltonian under consideration) toward a steady-state distribution representing an approximation to the true ground state. Unknown transition coefficients in the master equation are treated as variational parameters. We illustrate the method by applying it to the J1-J2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. Without frustration (J2=0), the amplitudes are radially symmetric and fall off as 1/r^3 in the bond length. As the frus…
We study the Kondo--Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice at half-filling. Due to the vanishing of the density of states at the fermi level, the Kondo insulator disappears at a finite Kondo coupling even in the absence of the Heisenberg exchange. We adopt a large-N formulation of this model and use the renormalization group machinery to study systematically the second order phase transition of the Kondo insulator (KI) to the algebraic spin liquid (ASL). We note that neither phase breaks any physical symmetry, so that the transition is not described by the standard Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson cr…
