Researchers classify chiral spin liquids on the pyrochlore lattice and identify characteristic experimental signatures that could help uncover these elusive quantum states

Watercolour painting liquid pattern (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Esb Professional)

In magnets, the magnetic moments of electrons, known as spins, usually align in an ordered pattern. However, in a spin liquid, the spins never settle into a fixed arrangement. Instead, they continue to fluctuate collectively even at very low temperatures. In a chiral spin liquid, these fluctuations have a preferred handedness, similar to the difference between left and right hands or clockwise and anticlockwise rotation.

This research focuses on the pyrochlore lattice, a three-dimensional structure made of interconnected tetrahedra. Because of this geometry, the spins cannot all simultaneously satisfy their preferred interactions, making the system “frustrated”.…