Numerical study of magnetization plateaus in the spin-1/2 kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet

We clarify the existence of several magnetization plateaus for the kagome S = 1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model in a magnetic field. Using approximate or exact localized magnon eigenstates, we are able to describe in a similar manner the plateau states that occur for magnetization per site m = 1/3, 5/9, and 7/9 of the saturation value. These results are confirmed using large-scale exact diagonalization on lattices up to 63 sites.