$Z_{2}$ spin liquid ground state of the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the ground state of the spin-1/2 Kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model is a $Z_{2}$ spin liquid with a small spinon gap, challenging the previous belief in a $U(1)$ Dirac spin liquid state.

Contribution

It identifies the $Z_{2}$ spin liquid as the variational ground state, providing new insights into the excitation spectrum and the nature of the Kagome antiferromagnet.

Findings

The $Z_{2}$ spin liquid state has a small spinon gap of about 1/40 of the bandwidth.

The $Z_{2}$ and $U(1)$ states have high overlap but different excitation spectra.

The system is better viewed as nearly critical rather than a gapped $Z_{2}$ spin liquid.

Abstract

We show that the best variational ground state of the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model with nearest-neighboring exchange coupling(NN-KAFH) is a $Z_{2}$ spin liquid state, rather than the widely believed $U(1)$ Dirac spin liquid state. The spinon excitation in the $Z_{2}$ spin liquid state has a small gap of about $1/40$ of the spinon band width. We find that while the $Z_{2}$ and the $U(1)$ spin liquid state have a large overlap on finite clusters and are thus very close in energy, they host totally different spinon excitation spectrum. The strength of the RVB theory becomes particularly clear in such a situation, as it provides not only a variational understanding of the ground state structure, but also a comprehensive picture for the excitation spectrum of the system. Our result indicates that the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ NN-KAFH should be better understood as a nearly critical system, rather than a prototypical gapped $Z_{2}$ spin liquid system.