Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The Kitaev honeycomb model supports gapless and gapped quantum spin liquid phases. Its exact solvability relies on extensively many locally conserved quantities. Any real-world manifestation of these phases would include imperfections in the form of disorder and interactions that break integrability. We show that the latter qualitatively alters the properties of vacancies in the gapless Kitaev spin liquid: (i) Isolated vacancies carry a magnetic moment, which is absent in the exactly solvable case. (ii) Pairs of vacancies on even or opposite sublattices gap each other with distinct power laws that reveal the presence of emergent gauge flux.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Authors: Ihor Yatsuta, David F. Mross
Institution: Weizmann Institute of Science
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4404671505