Semionic resonating valence bond states

Abstract

The nature of the kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet (HAFM) is under ongoing debate. While recent evidence points towards a Z_2 topological spin liquid, the exact nature of the topological phase is still unclear. In this paper, we introduce semionic Resonating Valence Bond (RVB) states, this is, Resonating Valence Bond states which are in the Z_2 ordered double-semion phase, and study them using Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS). We investigate their physics and study their suitability as an ansatz for the HAFM, as compared to a conventional RVB state which is in the Toric Code Z_2 topological phase. In particular, we find that a suitably optimized "semionic simplex RVB" outperforms the equally optimized conventional "simplex RVB" state, and that the entanglement spectrum (ES) of the semionic RVB behaves very differently from the ES of the conventional RVB, which suggests to use the ES to discriminate the two phases. Finally, we also discuss the possible relevance of space group symmetry breaking in valence bond wavefunctions with double-semion topological order.