Emergence of Chiral Spin Liquids via Quantum Melting of Non-Coplanar Magnetic Orders

Abstract

Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are long-range entangled states of quantum magnets which lie beyond the Landau paradigm of classifying phases of matter via broken symmetries. A physical route to arriving at QSLs is via frustration-induced quantum melting of ordered states such as valence bond crystals or magnetic orders. Here, we show, using extensive exact diagonalization (ED) and density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) studies of concrete $SU(2)$ invariant spin models on honeycomb, triangular and square lattices, that chiral spin liquids (CSLs) emerge as descendants of triple-$Q$ spin crystals with tetrahedral magnetic order and a large scalar spin chirality. Such ordered-to-CSL melting transitions may yield lattice realizations of effective Chern-Simons-Higgs field theories. Our work provides a distinct unifying perspective on the emergence of CSLs, and suggests that materials with magnetic skyrmion crystal order might provide a good starting point to search for CSLs.