Frustration-Induced Insulating Chiral Spin State in Itinerant Triangular-Lattice Magnets

Abstract

We study the double-exchange model at half-filling with competing superexchange interactions on a triangular lattice, combining exact diagonalization and Monte Carlo methods. We find that in between the expected itinerant ferromagnetic and 120° Yafet-Kittel phases a robust scalar-chiral, insulating spin state emerges. At finite temperatures the ferromagnet-scalar-chiral quantum critical point is characterized by anomalous bad-metal behavior in charge transport as observed in frustrated itinerant magnets R2Mo2O7.