Magnetic phases of spin-3/2 fermions on a spatially anisotropic square lattice

Abstract

We study the magnetic phase diagram of spin-3/2 fermions in a spatially anisotropic square optical lattice at quarter filling (corresponding to one particle per lattice site). In the limit of the large on-site repulsion the system can be mapped to the so-called Sp(N) Heisenberg spin model with N=4. We analyze the Sp(N) spin model with the help of the large-N field-theoretical approach and show that the effective theory corresponds to the Sp(N) extension of the CP^{N-1} model, with the Lorentz invariance generically broken. We obtain the renormalization flow of the model couplings and show that although the Sp(N) terms are seemingly irrelevant, their presence leads to a renormalization of the CP^{N-1} part of the action, driving a phase transition. We further consider the influence of the external magnetic field (the quadratic Zeeman effect), and present the qualitative analysis of the ground state phase diagram.

10 Revtex pages, 5 figures; (v2) corrected the last paragraph in Appendix B and some typos; (v3) added references, extended discussion of the phase diagram