A quantum monomer-dimer model on Penrose tilings

Abstract: We define a quantum monomer-dimer model in the space of maximal dimer coverings of quasicrystalline Penrose tilings. Since Penrose tilings do not admit perfect dimer coverings, as shown by F. Flicker et al., PRX 10, 011005 (2020), monomers are necessarily present in our model. The model features a frustration-free Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) point where the ground state is a uniform superposition of all the exponentially many maximal dimer coverings, despite the presence of a finite density of monomers. We map our model to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge theory with matter and calculate various correlators to characterize the phase of the system at the RK point using classical Monte Carlo calculations. Specifically, we compute the dimer-dimer and vison-vison correlators, as well as open Wilson lines and closed Wilson loops corresponding to the monomers and the visons. We find that both the dimer-dimer and vison-vison correlators decay exponentially with distance. The open Wilson lines and closed Wilson loops decay exponentially with the same correlation length, indicating that the gauge theory is in the confined phase, which implies that the system is likely in an ordered phase.