Ground state of the two-dimensional antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model studied using an extended Wigner-Jordon transformation

Abstract

A two-dimensional (2D) Wigner-Jordon transformation which maps spin variables into spinless fermion variables is found and is used to study the 2D spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. The transformation generates a fictitious gauge field in the XY component of the Heisenberg model, and hence induces an in-phase orbital current in the Ising component flowing around each elementary plaquette of the underlying lattice. The ground state of the Heisenberg model in a 2D square lattice is found to be an in-phase N\'eel flux phase, i.e., a coexisting state of the flux phase with in-phase orbital currents and a long-range antiferromagnetic spin order. The zero-temperature mean-field energy of the in-phase N\'eel flux state, ${\mathit{E}}_{0}$=-0.33J per bond, is only 1% higher than the best-estimated ground-state energy, -0.334J per bond.