Unusual ordered phases of highly frustrated magnets: a review

Abstract

We review ground states and excitations of a quantum antiferromagnet on triangular and other frustrated lattices. We pay special attention to the combined effects of magnetic field h, spatial anisotropy R, and spin magnitude S. The focus of the review is on the novel collinear spin density wave and spin nematic states, which are characterized by fully gapped transverse spin excitations with $S^z = \pm 1$. We discuss extensively R-h phase diagram of the antiferromagnet, both in the large-S semiclassical limit and the quantum S=1/2 limit. When possible, we point out connections with experimental findings.