In recent years, growing experimental and theoretical evidence suggests the existence of quantum spin liquid phase in kagome magnets, however its nature is still controversial. In this talk, I will introduce our study on kagome antiferromagnets with XXZ anisotropy. Numerically (by DMRG), we find that the emergence of the spin-liquid phase is independent of the anisotropy of the XXZ interaction. In particular, the two extreme limits-the easy-axis and the easy-plane-host the same spin-liquid phases as the isotropic Heisenberg model. Both a time-reversal-invariant spin liquid and a chiral spin liquid are obtained. We show that they evolve continuously into each other by tuning the second- and the third-neighbor interactions. Theoretically, we focus on the strong easy axis limit. By performing a duality transformation we obtain an effective model, which is basically a compact U(1)-Higgs lattice gauge model.
I will also discuss the possible spin liquid phase of this effective model, which naively is not captured by Anderson’s RVB picture for spin liquid.

Yin-Chen He and Yan Chen, PRL 114, 037201 (2015)
Yin-Chen He, D. N. Sheng, and Yan Chen, PRL 112, 137202 (2014)
Yin-Chen He, et al. (in preparation)