SU(4)-symmetric spin-orbital liquids on the hyperhoneycomb lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates an SU(4)-symmetric spin-orbital model on the hyperhoneycomb lattice, revealing a stable quantum spin-orbital liquid with a Fermi surface of fermionic partons, using variational Monte Carlo and analytical methods.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed study of SU(4) symmetric spin-orbital liquids on the hyperhoneycomb lattice, identifying a stable zero-flux state with a Fermi surface of fermionic partons.

Findings

The lowest-energy state is a zero-flux quantum spin-orbital liquid.

The state features a Fermi surface of four-color fermionic partons.

The liquid state remains stable against tetramerization and long-range magnetic order.

Abstract

We study the effective spin-orbital model that describes the magnetism of 4$d^1$ or 5$d^1$ Mott insulators in ideal tricoordinated lattices. In the limit of vanishing Hund's coupling, the model has an emergent SU(4) symmetry which is made explicit by means of a Klein transformation on pseudospin degrees of freedom. Taking the hyperhoneycomb lattice as an example, we employ parton constructions with fermionic representations of the pseudospin operators to investigate possible quantum spin-orbital liquid states. We then use variational Monte Carlo (VMC) methods to compute the energies of the projected wave functions. Our numerical results show that the lowest-energy quantum liquid corresponds to a zero-flux state with a Fermi surface of four-color fermionic partons. In spite of the Fermi surface, we demonstrate that this state is stable against tetramerization. A combination of linear flavor wave theory and VMC applied to the complete microscopic model also shows that this liquid state is stable against the formation of collinear long-range order.