Electric field control of a quantum spin liquid in weak Mott insulators

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Schultz, Daniel J., Khoury, Alexandre, Desrochers, Félix, Tavakol, Omid, Zhang, Emily Z., Kim, Yong Baek
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Schultz, Daniel J.
Khoury, Alexandre
Desrochers, Félix
Tavakol, Omid
Zhang, Emily Z.
Kim, Yong Baek
author_facet Schultz, Daniel J.
Khoury, Alexandre
Desrochers, Félix
Tavakol, Omid
Zhang, Emily Z.
Kim, Yong Baek
contents The triangular lattice Hubbard model at strong coupling, whose effective spin model contains both Heisenberg and ring exchange interactions, exhibits a rich phase diagram as the ratio of the hopping $t$ to onsite Coulomb repulsion $U$ is tuned. This includes a chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase. Nevertheless, this exotic phase remains challenging to realize experimentally because a given material has a fixed value of $t/U$ that can difficultly be tuned with external stimuli. One approach to address this problem is applying a DC electric field, which renormalizes the exchange interactions as electrons undergo virtual hopping processes; in addition to creating virtual doubly occupied sites, electrons must overcome electric potential energy differences. Performing a small $t/U$ expansion to fourth order, we derive the ring exchange model in the presence of an electric field and find that it not only introduces spatial anisotropy but also tends to enhance the ring exchange term compared to the dominant nearest-neighbor Heisenberg interaction. Thus, increasing the electric field serves as a way to increase the importance of the ring exchange at constant $t/U$. Through density matrix renormalization group calculations, we compute the ground state phase diagram of the ring exchange model for two different electric field directions. In both cases, we find that the electric field shifts the phase boundary of the CSL towards a smaller ratio of $t/U$. Therefore, the electric field can drive a magnetically ordered state into the CSL. This explicit demonstration opens the door to tuning other quantum spin systems into spin liquid phases via the application of an electric field.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_00037
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Electric field control of a quantum spin liquid in weak Mott insulators
Schultz, Daniel J.
Khoury, Alexandre
Desrochers, Félix
Tavakol, Omid
Zhang, Emily Z.
Kim, Yong Baek
Strongly Correlated Electrons
The triangular lattice Hubbard model at strong coupling, whose effective spin model contains both Heisenberg and ring exchange interactions, exhibits a rich phase diagram as the ratio of the hopping $t$ to onsite Coulomb repulsion $U$ is tuned. This includes a chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase. Nevertheless, this exotic phase remains challenging to realize experimentally because a given material has a fixed value of $t/U$ that can difficultly be tuned with external stimuli. One approach to address this problem is applying a DC electric field, which renormalizes the exchange interactions as electrons undergo virtual hopping processes; in addition to creating virtual doubly occupied sites, electrons must overcome electric potential energy differences. Performing a small $t/U$ expansion to fourth order, we derive the ring exchange model in the presence of an electric field and find that it not only introduces spatial anisotropy but also tends to enhance the ring exchange term compared to the dominant nearest-neighbor Heisenberg interaction. Thus, increasing the electric field serves as a way to increase the importance of the ring exchange at constant $t/U$. Through density matrix renormalization group calculations, we compute the ground state phase diagram of the ring exchange model for two different electric field directions. In both cases, we find that the electric field shifts the phase boundary of the CSL towards a smaller ratio of $t/U$. Therefore, the electric field can drive a magnetically ordered state into the CSL. This explicit demonstration opens the door to tuning other quantum spin systems into spin liquid phases via the application of an electric field.
title Electric field control of a quantum spin liquid in weak Mott insulators
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.00037