Low energy structure of spiral spin liquids

Abstract

In this work we identify a previously unexplored type of topological defect in spiral spin liquids -- the momentum vortex -- and reveal its dominant role in shaping the low energy physics of such systems. Spiral spin liquids are a class of classical spin liquids featuring sub-extensively degenerate ground states. They are distinct from spin liquids on geometrically frustrated lattices, in which the ground state degeneracy is extensive and connected by local spin flips. Despite a handful of experimental realizations and many theoretical studies, a concrete physical picture of their spin liquidity has not been established so far. In this work, we study a 2D spiral spin liquid model to answer this question. We find that the local momentum vector field can carry topological defects in the form of vortices, which, however, have very different properties from the commonly known spin vortices. The fluctuations of such vortices lead the system into a liquid phase at intermediate temperatures. Furthermore, the effective low energy theory of such vortices indicates their equivalence to quadrupoles of fractons in a rank-2 U(1) gauge theory or, alternatively, to quadrupoles of disclinations in elasticity theory. At very low temperatures, the system freezes into a glassy state in which these vortices form a rigid network with straight-line domain walls. Our work sheds light on the nature of spiral spin liquids and also paves the way toward understanding their quantum limit.

22 pages, 15 figures

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• Spiral Spin Liquid Noise
• Observation of the spiral spin liquid in a triangular-lattice material
• Emergent curved space and gravitational lensing in quantum materials
• Frustration-driven topological textures on the honeycomb lattice: antiferromagnetic meron-antimeron and skyrmion crystals emerging from spiral spin liquids
• Thermodynamics of the dipole-octupole pyrochlore magnet Ce${}_2$Hf${}_2$O${}_7$ in applied magnetic fields
• Disorder effects in spiral spin liquids: Long-range spin textures, Friedel-like oscillations, and spiral spin glasses
• Magnetic properties of the spiral spin liquid and surrounding phases in the square lattice XY model
• Giant Magnetocaloric Effect in a Honeycomb Spiral Spin-Liquid Candidate
• A Theorem on Extensive Spectral Degeneracy for Systems with Higher Symmetries in General Dimensions
• The Finite-Temperature Behavior of a Triangular Heisenberg Antiferromagnet
• Itinerant and topological excitations in a honeycomb spiral spin liquid candidate
• Subsystem symmetries, critical Bose surface, and immobile excitations in an extended compass model
• Codimension-Two Spiral Spin-Liquid in the Effective Honeycomb-Lattice Compound Cs${}_3$Fe${}_2$Cl${}_9$
• Mapping the Phase Diagram of a Frustrated Magnet: Degeneracies, Flat Bands, and Canting Cycles on the Pyrochlore Lattice
• Spiral spin liquid resilient to quantization in the frustrated honeycomb antiferromagnet GdZnPO
• Decorated cluster lattices: a natural framework for classical spin liquids and flat bands