Dirac-Type Nodal Spin Liquid Revealed by Refined Quantum Many-Body Solver Using Neural-Network Wave Function, Correlation Ratio, and Level Spectroscopy

Abstract

Pursuing fractionalized particles that do not bear properties of conventional measurable objects, exemplified by bare particles in the vacuum such as electrons and elementary excitations such as magnons, is a challenge in physics. Here we show that a machine-learning method for quantum many-body systems that has achieved state-of-the-art accuracy reveals the existence of a quantum spin liquid (QSL) phase in the region 0.49≲J_{2}/J_{1}≲0.54 convincingly in spin-1/2 frustrated Heisenberg model with the nearest and next-nearest-neighbor exchanges, J_{1} and J_{2}, respectively, on the square lattice. This is achieved by combining with the cutting-edge computational schemes known as the correlation ratio and level spectroscopy methods to mitigate the finite-size effects. The quantitative one-to-one correspondence between the correlations in the ground state and the excitation spectra found in the present analyses enables the reliable identification and estimation of the QSL and its nature. The spin excitation spectra containing both singlet and triplet gapless Dirac-like dispersions signal the emergence of gapless fractionalized spin-1/2 Dirac-type spinons in the distinctive QSL phase. Unexplored critical behavior with coexisting and dual power-law decays of Néel antiferromagnetic and dimer correlations is revealed. The power-law decay exponents of the two correlations differently vary with J_{2}/J_{1} in the QSL phase and thus have different values except for a single point satisfying the symmetry of the two correlations. The isomorph of excitations with the cuprate d-wave superconductors revealed here implies a tight connection between the present QSL and superconductivity. This achievement demonstrates that the quantum-state representation using machine-learning techniques, which had mostly been limited to benchmarks, is a promising tool for investigating grand challenges in quantum many-body physics.