Berlin 2024 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 87: Frustrated Magnets: Spin Liquids
TT 87.5: Talk
Friday, March 22, 2024, 10:30–10:45, H 3010
2-Form U(1) Spin Liquids: Classical Model and Quantum Aspects — •Kristian Chung1 and Michel Gingras2 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Strasse 38, D-01187 Dresden, Germany — 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada
In this talk I introduce the concept of 2-form U(1) spin liquids, described by emergent 2-form U(1) gauge fields and supporting fractionalized string excitations. I introduce a frustrated Ising model on the pyrochlore lattice dubbed the "spin vorticity model", constructed to enforce a microscopic zero-curl constraint. I demonstrate that the ground state manifold is a classical spin liquid, with algebraically decaying correlations and an extensive ground state entropy. Each ground state may be decomposed into a collection of closed 2-dimensional membranes, and spin-flips fractionalize into strings attached to open membranes. The emergent gauge structure of this spin liquid is given by the theory of 2-form electrodynamics, which describes 1-dimensional charged strings coupled to a rank-2 anti-symmetric gauge field. Perturbing the classical model with quantum exchange interactions results in an effective "membrane exchange" model of the quantum dynamics, which maps to a strongly-coupled frustrated 2-form U(1) lattice gauge theory. The string excitations are captured by coupling a 1-form string field to the 2-form U(1) gauge field, thus mapping a quantum spin model to a 2-form U(1) gauge-Higgs model. I discuss the possibility of realizing a novel class of quantum phases of matter: 2-form U(1) quantum spin liquids.
Keywords: string; membrane; generalized symmetry; pyrochlore; fractionalization