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arXiv · 0806.4395

Gapless spin liquids on the three dimensional hyper-kagome lattice of Na$_4$Ir$_3$O$_8$

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that Na$_4$Ir$_3$O$_8$, a material in which s=1/2 iridium local moments form a three dimensional network of corner-sharing triangles, may have a quantum spin liquid ground state with gapless spin excitations. Using a combination of exact diagonalization, symmetry analysis of fermionic mean field ground states and Gutzwiller projected variational wavefunction studies, we propose a quantum spin liquid with spinon Fermi surfaces as a favorable candidate for the ground state of the Heisenberg model on the hyper-kagome lattice of Na$_4$Ir$_3$O$_8$. We present a renormalized mean field theory of the specific heat of this spin liquid and also discuss possible low temperature instabilities of the spinon Fermi surfaces.

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Michael Lawler, Arun Paramekanti, Yong Baek Kim, Leon Balents. 2008-06-26. Gapless spin liquids on the three dimensional hyper-kagome lattice of Na$_4$Ir$_3$O$_8$. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.101.197202

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