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Generic spiral spin liquids

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Abstract

Spiral spin liquids are unique classical spin liquids that occur in many frustrated spin systems, but do not comprise a new phase of matter. Owing to extensive classical ground-state degeneracy, the spins in a spiral spin liquid thermally fluctuate cooperatively from a collection of spiral configurations at low temperatures. These spiral propagation wavevectors form a continuous manifold in reciprocal space, i.e., a spiral contour or a spiral surface, that strongly governs the low-temperature thermal fluctuations and magnetic physics. In this paper, the relevant spin models conveying the spiral spin liquid physics are systematically explored and the geometric origin of the spiral manifold is clarified in the model construction. The spiral spin liquids based on the dimension and the codimension of the spiral manifold are further clarified. For each class, the physical properties are studied both generally and for specific examples. The results are relevant to a wide range of frustrated magnets. A survey of materials is given and future experiments are suggested.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Fei-Ye Li and Dr. Xiao-Tian Zhang for useful discussions. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant Nos. 2018YFE0103200, 2016YFA0300500, and 2016YFA0301001), the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (Grant No. 2019SHZDZX04), and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong with General Research Fund (Grant No. 17306520).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and HKU-UCAS Joint Institute for Theoretical and Computational Physics at Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Xu-Ping Yao, Jian Qiao Liu, Chun-Jiong Huang & Gang Chen

  2. International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Jian Qiao Liu

  3. School of Physics and Astronomy, Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Xiaoqun Wang

  4. Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control of MOE, Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Shenyang, 110016, China

    Xiaoqun Wang

  5. State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Department of Physics, Institute of Nanoelectronics and Quantum Computing, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Gang Chen

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  1. Xu-Ping Yao
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  4. Xiaoqun Wang
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Correspondence to Gang Chen.

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This article can also be found at http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/10.1007/sll467-021-1074-9.

arXiv: 2011.03007.

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Yao, XP., Liu, J.Q., Huang, CJ. et al. Generic spiral spin liquids. Front. Phys. 16, 53303 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-021-1074-9

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