Spin-Orbital Quantum Liquid on the Honeycomb Lattice

The main characteristic of Mott insulators, as compared to band insulators, is to host low-energy spin fluctuations. In addition, Mott insulators often possess orbital degrees of freedom when crystal-field levels are partially filled. While in the majority of Mott insulators, spins and orbitals develop long-range order, the possibility for the ground state to be a quantum liquid opens new perspectives. In this paper, we provide clear evidence that the spin-orbital SU(4) symmetric Kugel-Khomskii model of Mott insulators on the honeycomb lattice is a quantum spin-orbital liquid. The absence of any form of symmetry breaking-lattice or SU(N)-is supported by a combination of semiclassical and numerical approaches: flavor-wave theory, tensor network algorithm, and exact diagonalizations. In addition, all properties revealed by these methods are very accurately accounted for by a projected variational wave function based on the pi-flux state of fermions on the honeycomb lattice at 1/4 filling. In that state, correlations are algebraic because of the presence of a Dirac point at the Fermi level, suggesting that the symmetric Kugel-Khomskii model on the honeycomb lattice is an algebraic quantum spin-orbital liquid. This model provides an interesting starting point to understanding the recently discovered spin-orbital-liquid behavior of Ba3CuSb2O9. The present results also suggest the choice of optical lattices with honeycomb geometry in the search for quantum liquids in ultracold four-color fermionic atoms.