Entanglement studies of resonating valence bonds on the frustrated square lattice

Abstract

We study a short-range resonating valence bond (RVB) wave function with diagonal links on the square lattice that permits sign-problem free wave function Monte-Carlo studies. Special attention is given to entanglement properties, in particular, the study of minimum entropy states (MES) according to the method of Zhang et. al. [Physical Review B {\bf 85}, 235151 (2012)]. We provide evidence that the MES associated with the RVB wave functions can be lifted from an associated quantum dimer picture of these wave functions, where MES states are certain linear combinations of eigenstates of a 't Hooft "magnetic loop"-type operator. From this identification, we calculate a value consistent with $\ln(2)$ for the topological entanglement entropy directly for the RVB states via wave function Monte-Carlo. This corroborates the $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$ nature of the RVB states. We furthermore define and elaborate on the concept of a "pre-Kasteleyn" orientation that may be useful for the study of lattices with non-planar topology in general.