Static and dynamical signatures of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in the Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on Cs$_2$Cu$_3$SnF$_{12}$ and YCu$_{3}$(OH)$_{6}$Cl$_{3}$, we consider the ${S=1/2}$ Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice with nearest-neighbor super-exchange $J$ and (out-of-plane) Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction $J_D$, which favors (in-plane) ${{\bf Q}=(0,0)}$ magnetic order. By using both variational Monte Carlo and tensor-network approaches, we show that the ground state develops a finite magnetization for $J_D/J \gtrsim 0.03 \mathrm{-} 0.04$; instead, for smaller values of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the ground state has no magnetic order and, according to the fermionic wave function, develops a gap in the spinon spectrum, which vanishes for $J_D \to 0$. The small value of $J_D/J$ for the onset of magnetic order is particularly relevant for the interpretation of low-temperature behaviors of kagome antiferromagnets, including ZnCu$_{3}$(OH)$_{6}$Cl$_{2}$. For this reason, we assess the spin dynamical structure factor and the corresponding low-energy spectrum, by using the variational Monte Carlo technique. The existence of a continuum of excitations above the magnon modes is observed within the magnetically ordered phase, with a broad peak above the lowest-energy magnons, similarly to what has been detected by inelastic neutron scattering on Cs$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$SnF$_{12}$.