Large-J approach to strongly coupled spin-orbital systems

Abstract

We present a novel approach to study the ground state and elementary excitations in compounds where spins and orbitals are entangled by on-site relativistic spin-orbit interaction. The appropriate degrees of freedom are localized states with an effective angular momentum J. We generalize J to arbitrary large values while maintaining the delicate spin-orbital entanglement. After projecting the inter-site exchange interaction to the manifold of effective spins, a systematic 1/J expansion of the effective Hamiltonian is realized using the Holstein-Primakoff transformation. Applications to representative compounds Sr2IrO4 and particularly vanadium spinels AV2O4 are discussed.