Coupled spin-1/2 ladders as microscopic models for non-Abelian chiral spin liquids

Understand

We construct a two-dimensional (2D) lattice model that is argued to realize a gapped chiral spin liquid with (Ising) non-Abelian topological order.

• The building blocks are spin-1/2 two-leg ladders with $SU(2)$-symmetric spin-spin interactions.
• The two-leg ladders are then arranged on rows and coupled through SU(2)-symmetric interactions between consecutive ladders.
• The intra-ladder interactions are tuned so as to realize the c = 1/2 Ising conformal field theory, a fact that we establish numerically via Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) studies.