Quantum spin ice on the breathing pyrochlore lattice
Name
PhysRevB.94.075146.pdf
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468.96 KB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Savary, Lucile
Wang, Xiaoqun
Kee, Hae-Young
Kim, Yong Baek
Yu, Yue
Chen, Gang
Date Issued
August 2016
Journal
Physical Review B
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Savary, Lucile et al. “Quantum Spin Ice on the Breathing Pyrochlore Lattice.” Physical Review B 94.7 (2016): n. pag. © 2016 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The Coulombic quantum spin liquid in quantum spin ice is an exotic quantum phase of matter that emerges on the pyrochlore lattice and is currently actively searched for. Motivated by recent experiments on the Yb-based breathing pyrochlore material Ba[subscript 3] Yb[subscript 2] Zn[subscript 5] O[subscript 11], we theoretically study the phase diagram and magnetic properties of the relevant spin model. The latter takes the form of a quantum spin ice Hamiltonian on a breathing pyrochlore lattice, and we analyze the stability of the quantum spin liquid phase in the absence of the inversion symmetry which the lattice breaks explicitly at lattice sites. Using a gauge mean-field approach, we show that the quantum spin liquid occupies a finite region in parameter space. Moreover, there exists a direct quantum phase transition between the quantum spin liquid phase and featureless paramagnets, even though none of theses phases break any symmetry. At nonzero temperature, we show that breathing pyrochlores provide a much broader finite-temperature spin liquid regime than their regular counterparts. We discuss the implications of the results for current experiments and make predictions for future experiments on breathing pyrochlores.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.94.075146
