Abstract
In this paper, we explore the relationship between strong spin-orbit coupling and spin liquid physics. We study a very general model on the triangular lattice where spin-orbit coupling leads to the presence of highly anisotropic interactions. We use variational Monte Carlo to study both U(1)U(1) quantum spin liquid states and ordered ones, via the Gutzwiller projected fermion construction. We thereby obtain the ground state phase diagram in this phase space. We furthermore consider effects beyond the Gutzwiller wavefunctions for the spinon Fermi surface quantum spin liquid, which are of particular importance when spin-orbit coupling is present.
Highlights
We have provided a comprehensive commentary on the possibility of spin liquid physics in a very general spin-orbit coupled model on the triangular lattice
We began by looking at the U(1) projective symmetry group (PSG) wave functions derived in Ref. [18]
Instead of working with these wave functions phenomenologically, we go beyond their simple mean-field analysis and find quantitative estimates of the energies of these ansätze using variational Monte Carlo
Summary
Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are exotic phases of correlated electrons possessing highly entangled ground states, exotic fractionalized excitations, and typically, the absence of any magnetic order [1, 2]. The VMC allows us to quantitatively compare the energies of the different candidate QSL phases This approach complements recent studies that work with the states phenomenologically [18, 19]. We develop a novel method to incorporate modifications beyond the simplest Gutzwiller projected free fermion state into our trial wave function This method proceeds by calculating many-body corrections order by order in perturbation theory, and sampling these using VMC. We find that this technique is useful for our problem where spin-orbit interactions introduce qualitative differences between the ground state and our trial states.
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