Jammed spin liquid in the bond-disordered kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet

Abstract

We study a class of continuous spin models with bond disorder including the kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet. For weak disorder strength, we find discrete ground states whose number grows exponentially with system size. These states do not exhibit zero-energy excitations characteristic of highly frustrated magnets but instead are local minima of the energy landscape. This represents a spin liquid version of the phenomenon of jamming familiar from granular media and structural glasses. Correlations of this jammed spin liquid, which upon increasing the disorder strength gives way to a conventional spin glass, may be algebraic (Coulomb-type) or exponential.