Competing orders, the Wess-Zumino-Witten term, and spin liquids

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate that in frustrated magnets when several conventional (i.e., symmetry-breaking) orders compete, and are "intertwined" by a Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term, the possibility of spin liquid arises. The resulting spin liquid could have excitations which carry fractional spins and obey non-trivial self/mutual statistics. As a concrete example, we consider the case where the competing orders are the Néel and valence-bond solid (VBS) order on square lattice. Examining different scenarios of vortex condensation from the VBS side, we show that the intermediate phases, including spin liquids, between the Néel and VBS order always break certain symmetry. Remarkably, our starting theory, without fractionalized particles (partons) and guage field, predicts results agreeing with those derived from a parton theory. This suggests that the missing link between the Ginzberg-Landau-Wilson action of competing order and the physics of spin liquid is the WZW term.

References in corpus (8)

• Classification of topological insulators and superconductors in three spatial dimensions
• "Deconfined" quantum critical points
• Many-body spin Berry phases emerging from the $\pi$-flux state: antiferromagnetic/valence-bond-solid competition
• From an Antiferromagnet to a Valence Bond Solid: Evidence for a First Order Phase Transition
• Global phase diagrams of frustrated quantum antiferromagnets in two dimensions: doubled Chern-Simons theory
• Quantum Criticality and Spin Liquid Phase in the Shastry-Sutherland model
• Gapless spin liquid and valence-bond solid in the $J_1-J_2$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice: insights from singlet and triplet excitations
• Non-abelian bosonization in two and three spatial dimensions and applications

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The electromagnetic duality and the 3+1D O(6) non-linear sigma model with a level-1 Wess-Zumino-Witten term
• Deconfined quantum criticality with internal supersymmetry