  Time reversal protected three dimensional (3D) topological paramagnets are
magnetic analogs of the celebrated 3D topological insulators. Such paramagnets
have a bulk gap, no exotic bulk excitations, but non-trivial surface states
protected by symmetry. We propose that frustrated spin-1 quantum magnets are a
natural setting for realising such states in 3D. We describe a physical picture
of the ground state wavefunction for such a spin-1 topological paramagnet in
terms of loops of fluctuating Haldane chains with non-trivial linking phases.
We illustrate some aspects of such loop gases with simple exactly solvable
models. We also show how 3D topological paramagnets can be very naturally
accessed within a slave particle description of a spin-1 magnet. Specifically
we construct slave particle mean field states which are naturally driven into
the topological paramagnet upon including fluctuations. We propose bulk
projected wave functions for the topological paramagnet based on this slave
particle description. An alternate slave particle construction leads to a
stable U(1) quantum spin liquid from which a topological paramagnet may be
accessed by condensing the emergent magnetic monopole excitation of the spin
liquid.
