English

Spin liquids in graphene

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-03-17 v2

Abstract

We reveal that local interactions in graphene allow novel spin liquids between the semi-metal and antiferromagnetic Mott insulating phases, identified with algebraic spin liquid and Z2_{2} spin liquid, respectively. We argue that the algebraic spin liquid can be regarded as the two dimensional realization of one dimensional spin dynamics, where antiferromagnetic correlations show exactly the same power-law dependence as valence bond correlations. Nature of the Z2_{2} spin liquid turns out to be d+idd + i d' singlet pairing, but time reversal symmetry is preserved, taking d+idd + i d' in one valley and didd - i d' in the other valley. We propose the quantized thermal valley Hall effect as an essential feature of this gapped spin liquid state. Quantum phase transitions among the semi-metal, algebraic spin liquid, and Z2_{2} spin liquid are shown to be continuous while the transition from the Z2_{2} spin liquid to the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator turns out to be the first order. We emphasize that both algebraic spin liquid and d±idd \pm id' Z2_{2} spin liquid can be verified by the quantum Monte Carlo simulation, showing the enhanced symmetry in the algebraic spin liquid and the quantized thermal valley Hall effect in the Z2_{2} spin liquid.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1011.1700,
  title  = {Spin liquids in graphene},
  author = {Minh-Tien Tran and Ki-Seok Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.1700},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:40:18.142Z