English

Nematic and supernematic phases in Kagome quantum antiferromagnets under a magnetic field

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-03-05 v2

Abstract

Optimizing translationally invariant infinite-Projected Entangled Pair States (iPEPS), we investigate the spin-2 Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) and spin-1 Heisenberg models on the Kagome lattice as a function of magnetic field. We found that the magnetization curves offer a wide variety of compressible and incompressible phases. Incompressible nematic phases breaking the lattice C3C_3 rotation -- for which we propose simple qualitative pictures -- give rise to magnetization plateaux at reduced magnetization mz=5/6m_z=5/6 and mz=1/3m_z=1/3 for spin-2 and spin-1, respectively, in addition to the mz=0m_z=0 plateaux characteristic of zero-field gapped spin liquids. Moving away from the plateaux we observe a rich variety of compressible superfluid nematic -- named "supernematic" -- phases breaking spontaneously both point group and spin-U(1) symmetries, as well as a superfluid phase preserving lattice symmetries. We also identify the nature -- continuous or first-order -- of the various phase transitions. Possible connections to experimental spin-1 systems are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.7205,
  title  = {Nematic and supernematic phases in Kagome quantum antiferromagnets under a magnetic field},
  author = {Thibaut Picot and Didier Poilblanc},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.7205},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages + supplemental material (6 pages)