We study low-temperature properties of atomic gases in trimerized optical kagomé lattices. The laser arrangements that can be used to create these lattices are briefly described. We also present explicit results for the coupling constants of the generalized Hubbard models that can be realized in such lattices. In the case of a single-component Bose gas the existence of a Mott insulator phase with fractional numbers of particles per trimer is verified in a mean-field approach. The main emphasis of the paper is on an atomic spinless interacting Fermi gas in the trimerized kagomé lattice with two fermions per site. This system is shown to be described by a quantum spin-$1∕2$ model on the triangular lattice with couplings that depend on the bond directions. We investigate this model by means of exact diagonalization. Our key finding is that the system exhibits nonstandard properties of a quantum spin-liquid crystal: it combines planar antiferromagnetic order in the ground state with an exceptionally large number of low-energy excitations. The possibilities of experimental verification of our theoretical results are critically discussed.

• Received 6 July 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.72.053612