Frustrated quantum spin systems in small triangular lattices studied with a numerical method

Abstract

The study of quantum frustrated systems remains one of the most challenging subjects of quantum magnetism, as they can hold quantum spin liquids, whose characterization is quite elusive. The presence of gapped quantum spin liquids possessing long-range entanglement while being locally indistinguishable often demands highly sophisticated numerical approaches for their description. Here we propose an easy computational method based on exact diagonalization with engineered boundary conditions in very small plaquettes. We apply the method to study the quantum phase diagram of diverse antiferromagnetic frustrated Heisenberg models in the triangular lattice. Our results are in qualitative agreement with previous results obtained by means of sophisticated methods like density matrix renormalization group (2D-DMRG) or variational quantum Monte Carlo.