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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Pinch-points to half-moons and up in the stars: The kagome skymap

Dominik Kiese1,*, Francesco Ferrari2,3,*, Nikita Astrakhantsev4,*, Nils Niggemann5,6,3,*, Pratyay Ghosh3,7,*, Tobias Müller7, Ronny Thomale3,7, Titus Neupert4, Johannes Reuther5,6,3 et al.

Michel J. P. Gingras8, Simon Trebst1, and Yasir Iqbal3,†

  • 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, 50937 Cologne, Germany
  • 2Institut für Theoretische Physik, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Max-von-Laue-Straße 1, D-60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • 3Department of Physics and Quantum Center for Diamond and Emergent Materials (QuCenDiEM), Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India
  • 4Department of Physics, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland
  • 5Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany
  • 6Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, D-14109 Berlin, Germany
  • 7Institute for Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Julius-Maximilian's University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany
  • 8Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †yiqbal@physics.iitm.ac.in
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012025 – Published 24 February, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012025

Abstract

Pinch point singularities, associated with flat band magnetic excitations, are tell-tale signatures of Coulomb spin liquids. While their properties in the presence of quantum fluctuations have been widely studied, the fate of the complementary nonanalytic features—shaped as half moons and stars—arising from adjacent shallow dispersive bands has remained unexplored. Here, we address this question for the spin S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice with second and third neighbor couplings, which allows one to tune the classical ground state characterized by flat bands to one that is governed by shallow dispersive bands for intermediate coupling strengths. Employing the complementary strengths of variational Monte Carlo, pseudofermion functional renormalization group, and density-matrix renormalization group, we establish the quantum phase diagram of the model. The U(1) Dirac spin liquid ground state of the nearest-neighbor antiferromagnet remains remarkably robust till intermediate coupling strengths when it transitions into a pinwheel valence bond crystal displaying signatures of half moons in its structure factor. Our Letter thus identifies a microscopic setting that realizes one of the proximate orders of the Dirac spin liquid identified in a recent work [Song, Wang, Vishwanath, and He, Nat. Commun. 10, 4254 (2019)]. For larger couplings, we obtain a collinear magnetically ordered ground state characterized by starlike patterns.

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012025– Published 24 February, 2023
  • Received 30 July 2022
  • Accepted 7 February 2023
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