EVIDENCE OF A SPIN-LIQUID PHASE IN THE FRUSTRATED HONEYCOMB LATTICE

Abstract

In the present paper, we present some new data supporting the existence of a spin-disordered phase in the Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice with antiferromagnetic interactions up to third neighbors along the line J2 = J3, predicted in Ref. 1. We use the Schwinger boson technique followed by a mean field decoupling and exact diagonalization for small systems to show the existence of an intermediate phase with a spin gap and short range Néel correlations in the strong quantum limit [Formula: see text].