RVB signatures in the spin dynamics of the square-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet

We investigate the spin dynamics of the square-lattice spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet by means of an improved mean field Schwinger boson calculation. By identifying both, the long range N\'eel and the RVB-like components of the ground state, we propose an educated guess for the mean field triplet excitation consisting on a linear combination of local and bond spin flips to compute the dynamical structure factor. Our main result is that when this triplet excitation is optimized in such a way that the corresponding sum rule is fulfilled, we recover the low and high energy spectral weight features of the experimental spectrum. In particular, the anomalous spectral weight depletion at $(\pi,0)$ found in recent inelastic neutron scattering experiments can be attributed to the interference of the triplet bond excitations of the RVB component of the ground state. We conclude that the Schwinger boson theory seems to be a good candidate to adequately interpret the dynamic properties of the square-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet.Comment: 6 pages with 3 figure

Broken discrete and continuous symmetries in two dimensional spiral antiferromagnets

We study the occurrence of symmetry breakings, at zero and finite temperatures, in the J_1-J_3 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the square lattice using Schwinger boson mean field theory. For spin-1/2 the ground state breaks always the SU(2) symmetry with a continuous quasi-critical transition at J_3/J_1=0.38, from N\'eel to spiral long range order, although local spin fluctuations considerations suggest an intermediate disordered regime around 0.35 < J_3/J_1 < 0.5, in qualitative agreement with recent numerical results. At low temperatures we find a Z_2 broken symmetry region with short range spiral order characterized by an Ising-like nematic order parameter that compares qualitatively well with classical Monte Carlo results. At intermediate temperatures the phase diagram shows regions with collinear short range orders: for J_3/J_11 a novel phase consisting of four decoupled third neighbour sublattices with N\'eel (\pi,\pi) correlations in each one. We conclude that the effect of quantum and thermal fluctuations is to favour collinear correlations even in the strongly frustrated regime.Comment: 17 pages, accepted for publication in Journal of Physics: condensed Matte

Low temperature properties of the triangular-lattice antiferromagnet: a bosonic spinon theory

We study the low temperature properties of the triangular-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet with a mean field Schwinger spin-1/2 boson scheme that reproduces quantitatively the zero temperature energy spectrum derived previously using series expansions. By analyzing the spin-spin and the boson density-density dynamical structure factors, we identify the unphysical spin excitations that come from the relaxation of the local constraint on bosons. This allows us to reconstruct a free energy based on the physical excitations only, whose predictions for entropy and uniform susceptibility seem to be reliable within the temperature range $0< T <0.3J, which is difficult to access by other methods. The high values of entropy, also found in high temperature expansions studies, can be attributed to the roton-like narrowed dispersion at finite temperatures.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Effects of semiclassical spiral fluctuations on hole dynamics

We investigate the dynamics of a single hole coupled to the spiral fluctuations related to the magnetic ground states of the antiferromagnetic J_1-J_2-J_3 Heisenberg model on a square lattice. Using exact diagonalization on finite size clusters and the self consistent Born approximation in the thermodynamic limit we find, as a general feature, a strong reduction of the quasiparticle weight along the spiral phases of the magnetic phase diagram. For an important region of the Brillouin Zone the hole spectral functions are completely incoherent, whereas at low energies the spectral weight is redistributed on several irregular peaks. We find a characteristic value of the spiral pitch, Q=(0.7,0.7)\pi, for which the available phase space for hole scattering is maximum. We argue that this behavior is due to the non trivial interference of the magnon assisted and the free hopping mechanism for hole motion, characteristic of a hole coupled to semiclassical spiral fluctuations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Magnons and Excitation Continuum in XXZ triangular antiferromagnetic model: Application to Ba3CoSb2O9Ba_3CoSb_2O_9

We investigate the excitation spectrum of the triangular-lattice antiferromagnetic $XXZ$ model using series expansions and mean field Schwinger bosons approaches. The single-magnon spectrum computed with series expansions exhibits rotonic minima at the middle points of the edges of the Brillouin zone, for all values of the anisotropy parameter in the range $0\leq J^z/J\leq1$. Based on the good agreement with series expansions for the single-magnon spectrum, we compute the full dynamical magnetic structure factor within the mean field Schwinger boson approach to investigate the relevance of the $XXZ$ model for the description of the unusual spectrum found recently in $Ba_3CoSb_2O_9$. In particular, we obtain an extended continuum above the spin wave excitations, which is further enhanced and brought closer to those observed in $Ba_3CoSb_2O_9$ with the addition of a second neighbor exchange interaction approximately 15% of the nearest-neighbor value. Our results support the idea that excitation continuum with substantial spectral-weight are generically present in two-dimensional frustrated spin systems and fractionalization in terms of {\it bosonic} spinons presents an efficient way to describe them.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Spin polaron in the J1-J2 Heisenberg model

We have studied the validity of the spin polaron picture in the frustrated J1-J2 Heisenberg model. For this purpose, we have computed the hole spectral functions for the Neel, collinear, and disordered phases of this model, by means of the self-consistent Born approximation and Lanczos exact diagonalization on finite-size clusters. We have found that the spin polaron quasiparticle excitation is always well defined for the magnetically ordered Neel and collinear phases, even in the vicinity of the magnetic quantum critical points, where the local magnetization vanishes. As a general feature, the effect of frustration is to increase the amplitude of the multimagnon states that build up the spin polaron wave function, leading to the reduction of the quasiparticle coherence. Based on Lanczos results, we discuss the validity of the spin polaron picture in the disordered phase.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure

A test of the bosonic spinon theory for the triangular antiferromagnet spectrum

We compute the dynamical structure factor of the spin-1/2 triangular Heisenberg model using the mean field Schwinger boson theory. We find that a reconstructed dispersion, resulting from a non trivial redistribution of the spectral weight, agrees quite well with the spin excitation spectrum recently found with series expansions. In particular, we recover the strong renormalization with respect to linear spin wave theory along with the appearance of roton-like minima. Furthermore, near the roton-like minima the contribution of the two spinon continuum to the static structure factor is about 40 % of the total weight. By computing the density-density dynamical structure factor, we identify an unphysical weak signal of the spin excitation spectrum with the relaxation of the local constraint of the Schwinger bosons at the mean field level. Based on the accurate description obtained for the static and dynamic ground state properties, we argue that the bosonic spinon theory should be considered seriously as a valid alternative to interpret the physics of the triangular Heisenberg model.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, extended version including: a table with ground state energy and magnetization; and the density-density dynamical structure factor. Accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter

Classical Antiferromagnetism in Kinetically Frustrated Electronic Models

We study the infinite U Hubbard model with one hole doped away half-filling, in triangular and square lattices with frustrated hoppings that invalidate Nagaoka's theorem, by means of the density matrix renormalization group. We find that these kinetically frustrated models have antiferromagnetic ground states with classical local magnetization in the thermodynamic limit. We identify the mechanism of this kinetic antiferromagnetism with the release of the kinetic energy frustration as the hole moves in the established antiferromagnetic background. This release can occurs in two different ways: by a non-trivial spin-Berry phase acquired by the hole or by the effective vanishing of the hopping amplitude along the frustrating loops.Comment: 12 pages and 4 figures, with Supplementary Material. To be published in Phys. Rev. Let

Rotational invariance and order-parameter stiffness in frustrated quantum spin systems

We compute, within the Schwinger-boson scheme, the Gaussian-fluctuation corrections to the order-parameter stiffness of two frustrated quantum spin systems: the triangular-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet and the J1-J2 model on the square lattice. For the triangular-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet we found that the corrections weaken the stiffness, but the ground state of the system remains ordered in the classical 120 spiral pattern. In the case of the J1-J2 model, with increasing frustration the stiffness is reduced until it vanishes, leaving a small window 0.53 < J2/J1 < 0.64 where the system has no long-range magnetic order. In addition, we discuss several methodological questions related to the Schwinger-boson approach. In particular, we show that the consideration of finite clusters which require twisted boundary conditions to fit the infinite-lattice magnetic order avoids the use of ad hoc factors to correct the Schwinger-boson predictions.Comment: 9 pages, Latex, 6 figures as ps files, fig.1 changed and minor text corrections, to appear in Phys.Rev.