From frustration to glassiness via quantum fluctuations and random tiling with exotic entropy

When magnetic moments (spins) are regularly arranged in a geometry of a triangular motif, the spins may not satisfy simultaneously their interactions with their neighbors. This phenomenon, called frustration, leads to numerous energetically equivalent magnetic states (ground states), which results in exotic states such as spin liquid and spin ice. Here we report an alternative situation: a system that, classically, is to be a liquid in the clean limit freezes into a glassy state induced by quantum fluctuations. The case in point is a frustrated magnet in which spins are arranged in a triangular network of bi-pyramids. When taking into account quantum corrections, the classical degeneracy is broken into a set of local minima in a rugged energy landscape, which are separated by large energy barriers, over a finite number of degenerate, periodic, ground states. The appearance of large barriers is due to the absence of local zero-energy modes that are typical in spin-liquid candidate systems. We establish this by mapping the set of local energy minima states into a tiling with colored hexagonal tiles. We show that the system exhibits a large number of aperiodic tessellations. The configuration entropy of the local minima is extremely sensitive to boundary conditions, scaling with the boundary length rather than its volume. The low temperature thermodynamics is also discussed to compare it with other glassy materials.
Comment: paper+supplementary material 28 pages. too many figures