Using random boundary conditions to simulate disordered quantum spin models in two-dimensional systems

© 2017 American Physical Society. Disordered quantum antiferromagnets in two-dimensional compounds have been a focus of interest in the last years due to their exotic properties. However, with very few exceptions, the ground states of the corresponding Hamiltonians are notoriously difficult to simulate making their characterization and detection very elusive, both theoretically and experimentally. Here we propose a method to signal quantum disordered antiferromagnets by doing exact diagonalization in small lattices using random boundary conditions and averaging the observables of interest over the different disorder realizations. We apply our method to study the Heisenberg spin-1/2 model in an anisotropic triangular lattice. In this model, the competition between frustration and quantum fluctuations might lead to some spin-liquid phases as predicted from different methods ranging from spin-wave mean-field theory to 2D-DMRG or PEPS. Our method accurately reproduces the ordered phases expected of the model and signals quantum disordered phases by the presence of a large number of quasidegenerate ground states together with an undefined local order parameter. The method presents a weak dependence on finite-size effects.