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Existence of featureless paramagnets on the square and the honeycomb lattices in 2+1 dimensions

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

Chao-Ming Jian
Michael Zaletel

Abstract

The peculiar features of quantum magnetism sometimes forbid the existence of gapped "featureless" paramagnets which are fully symmetric and unfractionalized. The Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem is an example of such a constraint, but it is not known what the most general restriction might be. We focus on the existence of featureless paramagnets on the spin-1 square lattice and the spin-1 and spin-1/2 honeycomb lattice with spin rotation and space group symmetries in 2+1 dimensions. Although featureless paramagnet phases are not ruled out by any existing theorem, field theoretic arguments disfavor their existence. Nevertheless, by generalizing the construction of Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb, and Tasaki to a class we call "slave-spin" states, we propose featureless wave functions for these models. The featurelessness of the spin-1 slave-spin states on the square and honeycomb lattice are verified both analytically and numerically, but the status of the spin-1/2 honeycomb state remains unclear. © 2016 American Physical Society.

Date Published

Journal

Physical Review B

Volume

93

Issue

3

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84955246042&doi=10.1103%2fPhysRevB.93.035114&partnerID=40&md5=966e87f2817fc8b1d113bb68404e5e79

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevB.93.035114

Group (Lab)

Chao-Ming Jian Group

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