Topological paramagnetism in frustrated spin-1 Mott insulators

Abstract

Time-reversal-protected three-dimensional (3D) topological paramagnets are magnetic analogs of the celebrated 3D topological insulators. Such paramagnets have a bulk gap and no exotic bulk excitations, but have non-trivial surface states protected by symmetry. We propose that frustrated spin-1 quantum magnets are a natural setting for realizing such states in three dimensions. We describe a physical picture of the ground-state wave function for such a spin-1 topological paramagnet in terms of loops of fluctuating Haldane chains with nontrivial linking phases. We illustrate some aspects of such loop gases with simple exactly solvable models. We also show how 3D topological paramagnets can be very naturally accessed within a slave particle description of a spin-1 magnet. Specifically, we construct slave-particle mean-field states which are naturally driven into the topological paramagnet upon including fluctuations. We propose bulk projected wave functions for the topological paramagnet based on this slave-particle description. An alternate slave-particle construction leads to a stable U(1) quantum spin liquid from which a topological paramagnet may be accessed by condensing the emergent magnetic monopole excitation of the spin liquid.