Crystallization of the resonating valence bond liquid as vortex condensation

Abstract

We show that the liquid-to-crystal quantum phase transition in the Rokhsar--Kivelson dimer model on the two-dimensional triangular lattice occurs as a condensation of vortex-like excitations called ``visons''. This conclusion is drawn from the numerical studies of the vison spectrum in the liquid phase by using the Green's function Monte Carlo method. We find that visons remain the lowest excitation throughout the liquid phase and that their gap decreases continuously to zero at the phase transition. The nature of the crystal phase and the second order of the phase transition are in agreement with the earlier prediction of Moessner and Sondhi [Phys. Rev. B 63, 224401 (2001)].

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Spin Dynamics of the Spin-1/2 Kagome Lattice Antiferromagnet ZnCu_3(OH)_6Cl_2
• Projected wavefunction study of Spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the Kagome lattice
• Quantum magnetism in the paratacamite family: towards an ideal kagome lattice

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Quantum Dimer Model on the triangular lattice: Semiclassical and variational approaches to vison dispersion and condensation
• Dynamical dimer correlations at bipartite and non-bipartite Rokhsar-Kivelson points
• Magnetic field-induced transition in a quantum magnet described by the Quantum Dimer Model
• Single hole and vortex excitations in the doped Rokhsar-Kivelson quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice