February 16, 1998
We study the exact low energy spectra of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on small samples of the kagom\'e lattice of up to N=36 sites. In agreement with the conclusions of previous authors, we find that these low energy spectra contradict the hypothesis of N\'eel type long range order. Certainly, the ground state of this system is a spin liquid, but its properties are rather unusual. The magnetic ($\Delta S=1$) excitations are separated from the ground state by a gap. However, this gap is filled with nonmagnetic ($\Delta S=0$) excitations. In the thermodynamic limit the spectrum of these nonmagnetic excitations will presumably develop into a gapless continuum adjacent to the ground state. Surprisingly, the eigenstates of samples with an odd number of sites, i.e. samples with an unsaturated spin, exhibit symmetries which could support long range chiral order. We do not know if these states will be true thermodynamic states or only metastable ones. In any case, the low energy properties of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagom\'e lattice clearly distinguish this system from either a short range RVB spin liquid or a standard chiral spin liquid. Presumably they are facets of a generically new state of frustrated two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets.
Similar papers 1
November 26, 2004
We discuss the ground state and the low-lying excitations of the spin-half Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the two-dimensional square-kagome lattice. This magnetic system belongs to the class of highly frustrated spin systems with an infinite non-trivial degeneracy of the classical ground state as it is known also for the Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome and on the star lattice. The quantum ground state of the spin-half system is a quantum paramagnet likely with a finit...
June 17, 1997
A group symmetry analysis of the low lying levels of the spin-1/2 kagom\'e Heisenberg antiferromagnet is performed for small samples up to N=27. This approach allows to follow the effect of quantum fluctuations when the sample size increases. The results contradict the scenario of ``order by disorder'' which has been advanced on the basis of large S calculations. A large enough second neighbor ferromagnetic exchange coupling is needed to stabilize the $\sqrt 3 \times \sqrt 3$...
July 23, 2009
In this paper we report the latest results of exact diagonalizations of SU(2) invariant models on various lattices (square, triangular, hexagonal, checkerboard and kagome lattices). We focus on the low lying levels in each S sector. The differences in behavior between gapless systems and gapped ones are exhibited. The plausibility of a gapless spin liquid in the Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice is discussed. A rough estimate of the spin susceptibility in such an hypothe...
April 10, 2008
We numerically study the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagom\'{e} lattice using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. We find that the ground state is a magnetically disordered spin liquid, characterized by an exponential decay of spin-spin correlation function in real space and a magnetic structure factor showing system-size independent peaks at commersurate antiferromangetic wavevectors. We obtain a spin triplet excitation gap $\Delta ...
February 2, 2009
Spin excitations in an ordered Heisenberg magnet are magnons--bosons with spin 1. That may change when frustration and quantum fluctuations suppress the order and restore the spin-rotation symmetry. We show that spin excitations in the $S=1/2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on kagome are spinons--fermions with spin 1/2. In the ground state the system can be described as a collection of small, heavy pairs of spinons with spin 0. A magnetic excitation of lowest energy amounts to br...
November 21, 2016
We examine the perennial quantum spin-liquid candidate $S=1/2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice. Our study is based on achieving Lanczos diagonalization of the Hamiltonian on a $48$ site cluster in sectors with dimensions as a large as $5 \times 10^{11}$. The results reveal novel intricate structures in the low-lying energy spectrum. These structures by no means unambiguously support an emerging consensus of a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ spin liquid ground state, but inste...
December 15, 2002
The properties of the groundstate and first excitations of 2dimensionnal quantum antiferromagnets are rapidly sketched. A special emphasis is put on the gapped phases: Valence Bond Crystals and the two types of Spin Liquids. New results on the spin susceptibility of small samples of the Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a kagom\'e lattice are displayed for comparison with Kagemaya {\it et al.} experimental result (this conference).
November 24, 2003
We study the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model in a lattice that interpolates between the triangular and the kagome lattices. The exchange interaction along the bonds of the kagome lattice is J, and the one along the bonds connecting kagome and non-kagome sites is J', so that J'=J corresponds to the triangular limit and J'=0 to the kagome one. We use variational and exact diagonalization techniques. We analyze the behavior of the order parameter for the antiferromagnetic phase of the...
May 29, 2000
Low energy spectrum of the S=1 kagom\'e Heisenberg antiferromagnet (KHAF) is studied by means of exact diagonalization and the cluster expansion. The magnitude of the energy gap of the magnetic excitation is consistent with the recent experimental observation for \mpynn. In contrast to the $S=1/2$ KHAF, the non-magnetic excitations have finite energy gap comparable to the magnetic excitation. As a physical picture of the ground state, the hexagon singlet solid state is propos...
April 22, 2009
Entanglement renormalization techniques are applied to numerically investigate the ground state of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on a kagome lattice. Lattices of N={36,144,inf} sites with periodic boundary conditions are considered. For the infinite lattice, the best approximation to the ground state is found to be a valence bond crystal (VBC) with a 36-site unit cell, compatible with a previous proposal. Its energy per site, E=-0.43221, is an exact upper bound and is lower t...