Heavy-fermion spin liquid in the strong hybridization limit of the finite-U Anderson lattice model

Abstract

Studying the finite-U Anderson lattice model in the strong hybridization limit, we find a heavy-fermion spin liquid phase, where both conduction and localized fermions are strongly hybridized to form heavy fermions but this heavy-fermion phase corresponds to a symmetric Mott insulating state owing to the presence of charge gap, resulting from large Hubbard-U interactions in localized fermions. We show that this heavy-fermion spin liquid phase differs from the "fractionalized" Fermi liquid state, where the latter corresponds to a metallic state with a small Fermi surface of conduction electrons while localized fermions decouple from conduction electrons to form a spin liquid state. We discuss the stability of this anomalous spin liquid phase against antiferromagnetic ordering and gauge fluctuations, in particular, instanton effects associated with confinement of slave particles. Furthermore, we propose a variational wave function to check its existence from the microscopic model.