Saeed S. Jahromi, Román Orús, Didier Poilblanc, Frédéric Mila
SciPost Phys. 9, 092 (2020) ·
published 29 December 2020
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We study the zero-temperature phase diagram of the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$
Heisenberg model with breathing anisotropy (i.e., with different coupling
strength on the upward and downward triangles) on the kagome lattice. Our study
relies on large scale tensor network simulations based on infinite projected
entangled-pair state and infinite projected entangled-simplex state methods
adapted to the kagome lattice. Our energy analysis suggests that the U(1)
algebraic quantum spin-liquid (QSL) ground-state of the isotropic Heisenberg
model is stable up to very large breathing anisotropy until it breaks down to a
critical lattice-nematic phase that breaks rotational symmetry in real space
through a first-order quantum phase transition. Our results also provide
further insight into the recent experiment on vanadium oxyfluoride compounds
which has been shown to be relevant platforms for realizing QSL in the presence
of breathing anisotropy.
