English

Chiral spin liquid phase of the triangular lattice Hubbard model: a density matrix renormalization group study

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2020-05-27 v2

Abstract

Motivated by experimental studies that have found signatures of a quantum spin liquid phase in organic crystals whose structure is well described by the two-dimensional triangular lattice, we study the Hubbard model on this lattice at half filling using the infinite-system density matrix renormalization group (iDMRG) method. On infinite cylinders with finite circumference, we identify an intermediate phase between observed metallic behavior at low interaction strength and Mott insulating spin-ordered behavior at strong interactions. Chiral ordering from spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry, a fractionally quantized spin Hall response, and characteristic level statistics in the entanglement spectrum in the intermediate phase provide strong evidence for the existence of a chiral spin liquid in the full two-dimensional limit of the model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.00463,
  title  = {Chiral spin liquid phase of the triangular lattice Hubbard model: a density matrix renormalization group study},
  author = {Aaron Szasz and Johannes Motruk and Michael P. Zaletel and Joel E. Moore},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.00463},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

v2: 15 pages, 13 figures, plus 30 pages (38 figures) Supplemental Material. Substantial additional data supporting the original conclusions: additional cylinder geometries; flux insertion; MPS transfer matrix spectra; analysis of the metal-insulator transition; and analysis of domain walls between the two chiralities. v1:7 pages, 4 figures, plus 15 pages (22 figures) Supplementary Material

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:21:57.050Z