Topological Paramagnetism in Frustrated Spin-One Mott Insulators

Understand

Time reversal protected three dimensional (3D) topological paramagnets are magnetic analogs of the celebrated 3D topological insulators.

• Such paramagnets have a bulk gap, no exotic bulk excitations, but non-trivial surface states protected by symmetry.
• We propose that frustrated spin-1 quantum magnets are a natural setting for realising such states in 3D.
• We describe a physical picture of the ground state wavefunction for such a spin-1 topological paramagnet in terms of loops of fluctuating Haldane chains with non-trivial linking phases.