Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Elementary excitations in entangled states such as quantum spin liquids may exhibit exotic statistics different from those obeyed by fundamental bosons and fermions. Non-Abelian anyons exist in a Kitaev spin liquid—the ground state of an exactly solvable model. A smoking-gun signature of these excitations, namely a half-integer quantized thermal Hall conductivity, was recently reported in α-RuCl3. While fascinating, a microscopic theory for this phenomenon remains elusive because the pure Kitaev model cannot display this effect in an intermediate magnetic field. Here we present a microscopic theory of the Kitaev spin liquid emerging between the low- and high-field states. Essential to this result is an antiferromagnetic off-diagonal symmetric interaction which allows the Kitaev spin liquid to protrude from the ferromagnetic Kitaev limit under a magnetic field. This generic model displays a strong field anisotropy, and we predict a wide spin liquid regime when the field is perpendicular to the honeycomb plane.
Source: Nature Communications
Authors: Jacob S. Gordon, Andrei Catuneanu, Erik S. Sørensen, Hae-Young Kee
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $5,200
OpenAlex ID: W2914340208