A Classical Chiral Spin-Liquid from Chiral Interactions on the Pyrochlore Lattice

Abstract

Classical spin-liquids are paramagnetic phases which feature nontrivial patterns of spin correlations within their ground-state manifold whose degeneracy scales with system size. Often they harbor fractionalized excitations, and their low-energy fluctuations are described by emergent gauge theories. In this work, we discuss a model composed of chiral three-body spin interactions on the pyrochlore lattice that realizes a novel classical chiral spin-liquid. Employing both analytical and numerical techniques, we show that the ground-state manifold of this spin-liquid is given by a subset of the so-called color-ice states. We demonstrate that the ground states are captured by an effective gauge theory which possesses a divergence-free condition and an additional chiral term that constrains the total flux of the fields through a single tetrahedron. The divergence-free condition results in two-fold pinch points in the spin structure factor and the identification of bionic charges as the elementary excitations of the system. We discuss how the mobility of these elementary charges is restricted by the additional chiral term, which in turn suggests that these charges are fractons.

13 pages, 19 figures

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• Higher-Rank Spin Liquids and Spin Nematics from Competing Orders in Pyrochlore Magnets
• Quantum effects on pyrochlore higher-rank U(1) spin liquids: Pinch-line singularities, spin nematics, and connections to oxide materials
• Classical ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ spin liquid on the generalized four-color Kitaev model
• Coexistence of anomalous spin dynamics and weak magnetic order in a chiral trillium lattice K2FeSn(PO4)3
• Frustration and chirality in three-dimensional trillium lattices: Insights and Perspectives
• Classification and correlation signatures of chiral spin liquids on the pyrochlore lattice
• Quantum Coulomb Liquids of Different Rank in the Breathing Pyrochlore Antiferromagnet