Spin Liquids on the Tetratrillium Lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the classical and quantum spin liquid properties of the tetratrillium lattice, revealing a gapped spectrum with flat bands and no finite-temperature phase transition, supported by Monte Carlo, large-N, and renormalization group analyses.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the classical spin liquid behavior on the tetratrillium lattice and explores quantum effects using advanced theoretical methods.

Findings

Classical spin liquid exhibits a gapped spectrum with flat bands.

No finite-temperature phase transition occurs in Ising and Heisenberg models.

Quantum fluctuations may induce novel ground states in the S=1/2 limit.

Abstract

The tetratrillium lattice has recently been proposed as responsible for the dynamical properties observed in the $S=1$ langbeinite compound K$_2$Ni$_2$(SO$_4$)$_3$. Here, we study in detail the classical spin liquid properties of this lattice of tri-coordinated tetrahedra using classical Monte Carlo and large-$N$ theory calculations. In the large-$N$ limit, we find that the system presents a gapped spectrum with flat bottom bands, giving rise to a fragile spin liquid with exponentially decaying correlations according to the classification of classical spin liquids. We confirm that this scenario also holds in the more realistic Ising and Heisenberg cases, for which the system does not exhibit any finite-temperature phase transition, and the low-temperature spin structure factors exhibit excellent quantitative agreement with the large-$N$ theory. We also provide insight into the quantum $S=1/2$ limit by performing pseudo-Majorana functional renormalization group calculations at finite temperatures, and discuss the possible phases that can arise in the ground state due to quantum fluctuations.