Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 8, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00876-y
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering [DE-AC02-76SF00515]
- Department of Energy, Office of Science [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
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The search for quantum spin liquids in frustrated quantum magnets recently has enjoyed a surge of interest, with various candidate materials under intense scrutiny. However, an experimental confirmation of a gapped topological spin liquid remains an open question. Here, we show that circularly polarized light can provide a knob to drive frustrated Mott insulators into a chiral spin liquid, realizing an elusive quantum spin liquid with topological order. We find that the dynamics of a driven Kagome Mott insulator is well-captured by an effective Floquet spin model, with heating strongly suppressed, inducing a scalar spin chirality S-i . (S-j x S-k) term which dynamically breaks time-reversal while preserving SU(2) spin symmetry. We fingerprint the transient phase diagram and find a stable photo-induced chiral spin liquid near the equilibrium state. The results presented suggest employing dynamical symmetry breaking to engineer quantum spin liquids and access elusive phase transitions that are not readily accessible in equilibrium.
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