Fig. 8: Ground state and excited state gauge-field configuration.
From: A classical chiral spin liquid from chiral interactions on the pyrochlore lattice
Configuration of the Potts gauge fields \({{{{\bf{B}}}}}_{\mu }^{(c)}\) for a a ground-state k = 0 configuration, and b an excited configuration where bionic excitations are present. Here, the red, blue, and green arrows denote the local orientations of the \({{{{\bf{B}}}}}_{\mu }^{(x)}\), \({{{{\bf{B}}}}}_{\mu }^{(y)}\), and \({{{{\bf{B}}}}}_{\mu }^{(z)}\) fields, respectively. Note that, for the ground-state configuration, every tetrahedron obeys a two-in–two-out rule for each Potts field, corresponding to a state with no charges associated with any field. On the other hand, for the excited configuration, the red (blue) spheres represent charges associated with a non-zero Gauss' law of the \({{{{\bf{B}}}}}_{\mu }^{(x)}\) (\({{{{\bf{B}}}}}_{\mu }^{(y)}\)) field in the corresponding tetrahedra, where the light (dark) color indicates that the charge is positive (negative).
