Spin Correlations and Topological Entanglement Entropy in a Non-Abelian Spin-1 Spin Liquid

Abstract

We analyze the properties of a non-Abelian spin-1 chiral spin liquid state proposed by Greiter and Thomale [PRL 102, 207203 (2009)] using variational Monte Carlo. In this state the bosonic $\nu = 1$ Moore-Read Pfaffian wave function is used to describe a gas of bosonic spin flips on a square lattice with one flux quantum per plaquette. For toroidal geometries there is a three-dimensional space of these states corresponding to the topological degeneracy of the bosonic Moore-Read state on the torus. We show that spin correlations for different states in this space become indistinguishable for large system size. We also calculate the Renyi entanglement entropy for different system partitions to extract the topological entanglement entropy and provide evidence that the topological order of the lattice spin-liquid state is the same as that of the continuum Moore-Read state from which it is constructed.