Speaker:Dr. Rebecca Flint

Dr. Rebecca Flint

Physics Department, Iowa State University

Title:  A new playground for spin liquids: the stuffed honeycomb lattice

Abstract: Spin liquids are the simplest strongly correlated phases that realize topological order and fractional excitations potentially useful for quantum computation. As such, these provide an important testbed for theoretical techniques. However, these are rare both in experiment and in realistic models, and it is important to expand their phase space. In this talk, I will introduce the stuffed honeycomb lattice (a honeycomb lattice with a superimposed triangular lattice formed by sites at the center of each hexagon) that interpolates between the honeycomb, triangular and dice lattices, and show that the spin liquid previously found in the triangular lattice limit extends to occupy a large region of phase space. I will present both the classical and quantum phase diagrams, which reveal a novel classical multi-critical point that gives rise to a large spin liquid region. The spin liquid on the triangular lattice appears to be gapless, which is not well understood based on triangular lattice physics alone; our symmetry analysis suggests that the region is a novel Dirac spin liquid protected by the reduced stuffed honeycomb lattice symmetries. Finally, I will discuss potential materials realizations.

Bio: I am a condensed matter theorist at Iowa State University, working on various problems in strongly correlated electronic systems. I tend to be interested in translating abstract theoretical ideas to real materials, and vice versa.
I was an undergraduate in physics at Caltech, a graduate student in the condensed matter theory group at Rutgers University and most recently a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow in the condensed matter theory group at MIT.