Parent Hamiltonian for the Chiral Spin Liquid

Abstract

We present a method for constructing parent Hamiltonians for the chiral spin liquid. We find two distinct Hamiltonians for which the chiral spin liquid on a square lattice is an exact zero-energy ground state. We diagonalize both Hamiltonians numerically for 16-site lattices, and find that the chiral spin liquid, modulo its two-fold topological degeneracy, is indeed the unique ground state for one Hamiltonian, while it is not unique for the other.

14 pages, 3 figures; references added