2009/06/30 by Michael Hermele, Victor Gurarie, Ana Maria Rey · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.103.135301
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 135301 (2009) · 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Minor changes from v2. Final published version
arxiv created 2009/09/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We study Mott insulators of fermionic alkaline earth atoms, described by Heisenberg spin models with enhanced SU(N) symmetry. In dramatic contrast to SU(2) magnetism, more than two spins are required to form a singlet. On the square lattice, the classical ground state is highly degenerate and magnetic order is thus unlikely. In a large-N limit, we find a chiral spin liquid ground state with topological order and Abelian fractional statistics. We discuss its experimental detection. Chiral spin liquids with non-Abelian anyons may also be realizable with alkaline earth atoms.