Chiral Spin Liquids in Triangular-Lattice SU (N ) Fermionic Mott Insulators with Artificial Gauge Fields
Abstract
We show that, in the presence of a π /2 artificial gauge field per plaquette, Mott insulating phases of ultracold fermions with SU (N ) symmetry and one particle per site generically possess an extended chiral phase with intrinsic topological order characterized by an approximate ground space of N low-lying singlets for periodic boundary conditions, and by chiral edge states described by the SU(N ) 1 Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten conformal field theory for open boundary conditions. This has been achieved by extensive exact diagonalizations for N between 3 and 9, and by a parton construction based on a set of N Gutzwiller projected fermionic wave functions with flux π /N per triangular plaquette. Experimental implications are briefly discussed.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- October 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.167202
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1601.00958
- Bibcode:
- 2016PhRvL.117p7202N
- Keywords:
-
- Condensed Matter - Quantum Gases
- E-Print:
- 5+2 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables