Bathing in a sea of candidate quantum spin liquids: From the gapless ruby to the gapped maple-leaf lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum spin liquid phases in a family of frustrated two-dimensional lattices, revealing a transition from gapless to gapped states using advanced tensor network calculations.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of an extended quantum spin liquid in a generalized model interpolating between ruby and maple-leaf lattices, with detailed characterization of its properties.

Findings

Gapless spin liquid on the ruby lattice

Gapped spin liquid on the maple-leaf lattice

Transition occurs midway between the two lattices

Abstract

The spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the two-dimensional ruby and maple-leaf lattices is emerging as a new paradigmatic model of frustrated quantum magnetism, with the potential to realize intricate many-body phases on both mineral and synthetic platforms. We provide evidence that the generalized model interpolating between these two lattices features an extended quantum spin liquid ground state, which is gapless on the ruby lattice and gapped on the maple-leaf lattice, with the transition between the two occurring midway. We present equal-time spin structure factors which further characterize the nature of the presumed quantum spin liquid. Our results are based on one of the most extensive state-of-the-art variational infinite tensor network calculations to date, thereby helping us to resolve the long-standing issue of the delicate competition between magnetically ordered and paramagnetic states in this family of models.