Back to Search Start Over

Pinch-points to half-moons and up in the stars: the kagome skymap

Authors :
Kiese, Dominik
Ferrari, Francesco
Astrakhantsev, Nikita
Niggemann, Nils
Ghosh, Pratyay
Müller, Tobias
Thomale, Ronny
Neupert, Titus
Reuther, Johannes
Gingras, Michel J. P.
Trebst, Simon
Iqbal, Yasir
Source :
Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012025 (2023)
Publication Year :
2022

Abstract

Pinch point singularities, associated with flat band magnetic excitations, are tell-tale signatures of Coulomb spin liquids. While their properties in the presence of quantum fluctuations have been widely studied, the fate of the complementary non-analytic features -- shaped as half-moons and stars -- arising from adjacent shallow dispersive bands has remained unexplored. Here, we address this question for the spin $S=1/2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice with second and third neighbor couplings, which allows one to tune the classical ground state from flat bands to being governed by shallow dispersive bands for intermediate coupling strengths. Employing the complementary strengths of variational Monte Carlo, pseudo-fermion functional renormalization group, and density-matrix renormalization group, we establish the quantum phase diagram. The U(1) Dirac spin liquid ground state of the nearest-neighbor antiferromagnet remains remarkably robust till intermediate coupling strengths when it transitions into a pinwheel valence bond crystal displaying signatures of half-moons in its structure factor. Our work thus identifies a microscopic setting that realizes one of the proximate orders of the Dirac spin liquid identified in a recent work [Song, Wang, Vishwanath, He, Nat. Commun. 10, 4254 (2019)]. For larger couplings, we obtain a collinear magnetically ordered ground state characterized by star-like patterns.<br />Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Supplemental Material appended

Details

Database :
arXiv
Journal :
Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012025 (2023)
Publication Type :
Report
Accession number :
edsarx.2206.00264
Document Type :
Working Paper
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012025