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arXiv · 1802.00044

SU(4)-symmetric spin-orbital liquids on the hyperhoneycomb lattice

Abstract

We study the effective spin-orbital model that describes the magnetism of 4$d^1$ or 5$d^1$ Mott insulators in ideal tricoordinated lattices. In the limit of vanishing Hund's coupling, the model has an emergent SU(4) symmetry which is made explicit by means of a Klein transformation on pseudospin degrees of freedom. Taking the hyperhoneycomb lattice as an example, we employ parton constructions with fermionic representations of the pseudospin operators to investigate possible quantum spin-orbital liquid states. We then use variational Monte Carlo (VMC) methods to compute the energies of the projected wave functions. Our numerical results show that the lowest-energy quantum liquid corresponds to a zero-flux state with a Fermi surface of four-color fermionic partons. In spite of the Fermi surface, we demonstrate that this state is stable against tetramerization. A combination of linear flavor wave theory and VMC applied to the complete microscopic model also shows that this liquid state is stable against the formation of collinear long-range order.

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Willian M. H. Natori, Eric C. Andrade, Rodrigo G. Pereira. 2018-10-24. SU(4)-symmetric spin-orbital liquids on the hyperhoneycomb lattice. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.98.195113

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