2013/01/31 by Hao Song, Michael Hermele
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Antiferromagnetism #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Ground state #Hexagonal lattice #Lattice (music) #Mott insulator #Optical lattice #Phase (matter) #Phase diagram #Physics #Quantum #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Semiclassical physics #Superfluidity #Symmetry breaking #Ultracold atom #cond-mat.quant-gas #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.87.144423
published as Phys. Rev. B 87, 144423 (2013) · 10 pages, 3 figures. v2: minor changes
openalex publication_date 2013/04/29 · arxiv created 2013/04/30 · arxiv updated 2013/05/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study a class of SU(N) Heisenberg models, describing Mott insulators of fermionic ultracold alkaline earth atoms on the three-dimensional simple cubic lattice. Based on an earlier semiclassical analysis, magnetic order is unlikely, and we focus instead on a solvable large-N limit designed to address the competition among nonmagnetic ground states. We find a rich phase diagram as a function of the filling parameter k, composed of a variety of ground states spontaneously breaking lattice symmetries, and in some cases also time-reversal symmetry. One particularly striking example is a state spontaneously breaking lattice rotation symmetry, where the cubic lattice breaks up into bilayers, each of which forms a two-dimensional chiral spin liquid state.