SCRIPT

Slide 1:
- Welcome to my presentation on spin liquids. Spin liquid theory is a vast field with
many types and definitions, so instead of getting lost in that I’m going to introduce to
you what a spin liquid is by building up to a definition gradually. From that is going to
follow why it is worthwhile to listen to me talk about this subject and why it could be
incredibly important, and then we can look at how far we are experimentally with this
subject.
Slide 2:
- Take an antiferromagnetic system of spins as our first example. J is the AF coupling
between spins and S_i and S_j are the spins in the system, with J > 0 for AF state.
Finding the ground state for this system is quite easy, just take up-down-up-down and
so on. Done.
- Now take a simple triangle of spins. How would you write the product state? Not so
easy if we want to write the solution as a product state. This is the simplest example
of geometric frustration, which arises from competing interactions. However, if we
write two spins as a spin singlet state, that will minimize the energy. I’m not going to
prove it, but the quantum mechanical calculation is quite simple.
- Now let’s upgrade to a triangular lattice. The solution for the ground state is similar.
You take two spins and make them form a spin singlet, and you repeat this process for
other neighboring spins. That is your GS. However, you can do the same with
different sites forming a spin singlet. So, the GS solution is a massive superposition of
highly entangled states.
- You could also look at it as fluctuations in time from one state in the superposition to
another. So we can conclude that: frustration leads to fluctuations. These eigenstates
are called resonating valence bonds, which is a theory by P.W. Anderson, and he was
the originator of the spin liquid theory which made the whole field blow up.
- One more interesting feature of an RVB state is that it has fractional excitations. If we
want to go to an excited state, we pay a finite energy gap, and one of the spins
becomes totally free. This spin has s = ½ which is fractional which is indicative of
SQL’s in general. Usually you would have a spin ½ going to -1/2 which would result
in an integer excitation called a magnon.
- So why is this interesting? Many reasons but let me give you one that might grab your
attention. N qubits are N spins that are in entanglement, and so they store 2^N
complex numbers in its physical state. I’m not very well versed in this but quantum
processors have around 100 qubits, but now take the system we have at grand scale
and allow for long range entanglement. We don’t have 100 electrons in a small
system, more like 10^20. So, you could store 2^10^20 bits in your system. I think that
might convince, at least the gamers, that it is worthwhile to look into the experiments.
- A spin liquid is a system of spins which are highly correlated with one another due to
mutual interactions. Here we look at specifically QSL’s, which we define to be a state
 of matter in which the spins are highly entangled in a massive superposition, in which
spins continue to fluctuate and evade order even at 0K ideally.
Slide 3:
- Let’s go back quickly to our triangular lattice. If we relax our Ising condition of up
and down spins and allow for our spin to point in any direction, we also relax our
frustration to some degree and won’t have any degeneracy. This would not yield
quantum fluctuations as we wanted. So, can we find something that is even more
frustrated?
Slide 4:
- The answer is yes! It is the Kagome lattice AFM shown here. Classically it is
extremely degenerate, so let me show you why. To minimize the energy, we here must
put spins in a triangle such that the total spin is zero over the sum of a triangle. If we
do that for one of the triangles, we can do whatever we want with the other triangle,
as long as the sum of the other triangle is also zero. So, we can even take the spins out
of the plane for example. This yields an infinite classical degeneracy, so you can get
very large quantum fluctuations, which increases our chance of finding a QSL, which
we can see of this graph of a phase space. If the hopping is very small, from the
Hubbard model, then we get the classical case which is just an antiferromagnetic
insulator. In this region we have an RVB state as it includes long range entanglement
as we have discussed.
Slide 5:
- So how do we prove something is a QSL? Well, the first thing we could do is cool
down the AF below Curie Weiss temperature. A typical non-frustrated system would
induce order at temperature comparable to Curie Weiss temperature. Below you
would get an increase of the inverse of the susceptibility as we lower the temperature.
However, if we have a frustrated system, order would still be suppressed way below
this Curie Weiss temperature until the Neel temperature. So, there is a frustration
parameter f which ideally is infinity for a QSL as T_N should be zero. A frustration
parameter of 5-10 indicates a strong suppression of ordering.
- A highly frustrated does not mean that we have a spin liquid. Remember, they need to
undergo quantum fluctuations. There are systems where the valence bonds we drew
earlier are literally stuck in space. These are called VBS states. So, a mere frustration
test is not enough to make sure that we are dealing with a spin liquid. There is no
single experimental feature that identifies a spin-liquid state, so that is something to
keep in mind when we delve into these experiments.
- What else can we do except looking at what temperature we have ordering? We can
look at if we get these fractional spin excitations. How? With neutron experiments:
- We shoot a neutron at our solid, and the neutron interacts with solid via dipole
interaction. One spin flip of the neutron makes the spin of a solid flip. You know what
the energy is of the incoming neutron, and the energy of the outgoing neutron you can
deduce the momentum deposited in the solid which yields a sharp peak.
 - But in the case of an RVB state we get two peaks due to that the RVB state has
fractional excitations. However, the peaks are not really sharp peaks as the energy
now is not very defined. The two peaks can be a lot of combinations of energies. So,
we conclude that for an RVB state we have a very shallow excitation spectrum with
no sharp peaks.
Slide 6:
- Now we have all the building blocks to look at our first experiment. One of the most
famous candidates for SQL is Herbertsmithite. These are Kagome layers, remember
the story about Kagome being extremely frustrated, of cupper S = ½ spins separated
by non-magnetic Zn. Through interaction with the oxygen bonds a strong AFM
interaction is created between the copper spins in the 2D layers. So, it is a good
realization of an AFM spin-1/2 model on a Kagome lattice which theoretically is an
example of a quantum spin liquid.
- Herbertsmithite is shown to have absence of magnetic ordering down to 50 mK which
is the first thing we mentioned we could do to see if we have a SQL. I’m not going to
look into that experiment specifically, but I would like to show another experiment
which favors Herbertsmithite as a SQL. Like I said before we can look at the
excitation spectrum when we shoot neutron’s at our system, and that is exactly what
Han et al did. We see in the excitation spectrum found by the experiment that there is
no sharp peaks to be found, indicating that we have fractional excitations. This is not
a concise proof that we have a SQL, but like I said before, there is not one single
experiment that proves something is a SQL.

Slide 7: Types of SQL (1 minutes)

Slide 8: Alpha-RuCl3/Kitaev spin liquid (2.5 minutes)
Slide 9: RVB type (1.5 minutes)
Slide 10: Conclusion (1 minutes)