Abstract
A small value of the spin gap in quantum antiferromagnets with strong frustration makes them susceptible to nominally small deviations from the ideal Heisenberg model. One such perturbation, the anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction, is an important perturbation for the $S=1/2$ kagome antiferromagnet, one of the current candidates for a quantum-disordered ground state. We study the influence of the DM term in a related one-dimensional system, the sawtooth chain, which has valence-bond order in its ground state. Through a combination of analytical and numerical methods, we show that a relatively weak DM coupling, $0.115J$, is sufficient to destroy the valence-bond order, close the spin gap, and turn the system into a Luttinger liquid with algebraic spin correlations. A similar mechanism may be at work in the kagome antiferromagnet.
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