Wither the sliding Luttinger liquid phase in the planar pyrochlore

Using series expansion based on the flow equation method we study the zero temperature properties of the spin-1/2 planar pyrochlore antiferromagnet in the limit of strong diagonal coupling. Starting from the limit of decoupled crossed dimers we analyze the evolution of the ground state energy and the elementary triplet excitations in terms of two coupling constants describing the inter dimer exchange. In the limit of weakly coupled spin-1/2 chains we find that the fully frustrated inter chain coupling is critical, forcing a dimer phase which adiabatically connects to the state of isolated dimers. This result is consistent with findings by O. Starykh, A. Furusaki and L. Balents (Phys. Rev. B 72, 094416 (2005)) which is inconsistent with a two-dimensional sliding Luttinger liquid phase at finite inter chain coupling.