SU(2) slave-boson formulation of spin nematic states in S=1/2 frustrated ferromagnets

TL;DR

This paper develops an SU(2) slave boson framework to describe spin nematic states in frustrated S=1/2 ferromagnets, identifying stable spin-triplet RVB states with potential experimental relevance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel SU(2) slave boson formulation for bond-type spin nematic orders and applies it to find stable spin-triplet RVB states in a specific ferromagnetic model.

Findings

Identified two stable spin-triplet RVB states in the J1-J2 model.

Connected the Z2 BW state to previously observed quadrupolar order.

Analyzed low-energy excitations including gauge bosons and Goldstone modes.

Abstract

An SU(2) slave boson formulation of bond-type spin nematic orders is developed in frustrated ferromagnets, where the spin nematic states are described as the resonating spin-triplet valence bond (RVB) states. The d-vectors of spin-triplet pairing ansatzes play the role of the directors in the bond-type spin quadrupolar states. The low-energy excitations around such spin-triplet RVB ansatzes generally comprise the (potentially massless) gauge bosons, massless Goldstone bosons, and spinon individual excitations. Extending the projective symmetry group argument to the spin-triplet ansatzes, we show how to identify the number of massless gauge bosons efficiently. Applying this formulation, we next (i) enumerate possible mean field solutions for the S=1/2 ferromagnetic J1-J2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice, with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor J1 and competing antiferromagnetic next-nearest neighbor J2, and (ii) argue their stability against small gauge fluctuations. As a result, two stable spin-triplet RVB ansatzes are found in the intermediate coupling regime around J1:J2 \simeq 1:0.4. One is the Z_2 Balian-Werthamer (BW) state stabilized by the Higgs mechanism and the other is the SU(2) chiral p-wave (Anderson-Brinkman-Morel) state stabilized by the Chern-Simon mechanism. The former Z_2 BW state in fact shows the same bond-type spin quadrupolar order as found in the previous exact diagonalization study [N. Shannon et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 027213 (2006)].