Stabilizing Spin Liquids: Spin Liquid on the Sutffed Honeycomb Lattice
| Date/Time: | Monday, 01 Oct 2018 from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm |
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| Location: | Phys 0003 |
| Phone: | 515-294-5441 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Abstract: Spin liquids are the simplest strongly correlated phases that realize topological order and fractional excitations. As such, these provide an important testbed for theoretical techniques. However, these are rare both in experiment and in realistic models, and it is important to expand their phase space. In this talk, I will introduce the stuffed honeycomb lattice (a honeycomb lattice with a superimposed triangular lattice formed by sites at the center of each hexagon) that interpolates between the honeycomb, triangular and dice lattices, and show that the spin liquid previously found in the triangular lattice limit extends to occupy a large region of phase space. I will present both the classical and quantum phase diagrams, which reveal a novel classical multi-critical point that gives rise to a large spin liquid region. The spin liquid on the triangular lattice appears to be gapless, which is not well understood based on triangular lattice physics alone; our symmetry analysis suggests that the region could be a novel Dirac spin liquid protected by the reduced stuffed honeycomb lattice symmetries. Finally, I will discuss potential materials realizations.
Bio: Rebecca Flint did her undergraduate in physics at Caltech, her PhD in physics at Rutgers, and was a Simons postdoctoral fellow in the condensed matter theory group at MIT before coming to Iowa State in Fall 2013, where she is currently an assistant professor. She is a condensed matter theorist working in strongly correlated materials, and is particularly interested in translating abstract ideas to real materials, and vice versa. She has recently been awarded both the NSF CAREER and DOE Early Career grants that fund her research in stabilizing spin liquids and non-Kramers heavy fermion physics, respectively.