Numerical study of magnetization plateaus in the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the checkerboard lattice

We present numerical evidence that the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the two-dimensional checkerboard lattice exhibits several magnetization plateaus for m = 0, 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4, where m is the magnetization normalized by its saturation value. These incompressible states correspond to somewhat similar valence-bond crystal phases that break lattice symmetries, though they are different from the already established plaquette phase for m = 0. Our results are based on exact diagonalization as well as density-matrix renormalization-group large-scale simulations and interpreted in terms of simple parameter-free trial wave functions.