Contributor info: Mr Jason Iaconis

Jason Iaconis, Chunxiao Liu, Gábor B. Halász, Leon Balents

SciPost Phys. 4, 003 (2018) · published 19 January 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

In this paper, we explore the relationship between strong spin-orbit coupling and spin liquid physics. We study a very general model on the triangular lattice where spin-orbit coupling leads to the presence of highly anisotropic interactions. We use variational Monte Carlo to study both $U(1)$ quantum spin liquid states and ordered ones, via the Gutzwiller projected fermion construction. We thereby obtain the ground state phase diagram in this phase space. We furthermore consider effects beyond the Gutzwiller wavefunctions for the spinon Fermi surface quantum spin liquid, which are of particular importance when spin-orbit coupling is present.