Ground state of the $S$=1/2 pyrochlore Heisenberg antiferromagnet: A quantum spin liquid emergent from dimensional reduction

Abstract

The quantum antiferromagnet on the pyrochlore lattice offers an archetypal frustrated system, which potentially realizes a quantum spin liquid characterized by the absence of standard spontaneous symmetry breaking even at zero temperature, unusually as an isotropic 3D system. Despite tremendous progress in the literature, however, the nature of the ground state of the fully quantum-mechanical spin Hamiltonian on the pyrochlore lattice still remains elusive. Here, we show that an unconventional type of quantum spin liquid is born out from the pyrochlore system after the self-organized dimensional reduction leading to confined states in 2D layers. This conclusion is obtained from state-of-the-art variational Monte Carlo (VMC) simulations at zero temperature. Quantum spin liquids triggered by the emergent dimensional reduction is an unexplored route of the spin-liquid formation. The dimensional reduction from 3D to 2D is a consequence of a conventional spontaneous symmetry breaking, while the resultant decoupling of layers enables the emergence of a 2D quantum spin liquid that is adiabatically disconnected from trivial product states and exhibits strong quantum entanglement. The stabilized quantum spin liquid exhibits an algebraic decay of correlations and vanishing excitation gap in the thermodynamic limit. The wave-function structure supports the fractionalization of the spin into spinons. This spin-liquid ground state persists in the presence of spin-orbit interactions, which expands the possibilities of realizing quantum spin liquids in real pyrochlore-structured materials.