Dynamics of a Two-Dimensional Quantum Spin Liquid: Signatures of Emergent Majorana Fermions and Fluxes

By J. Knolle, D. Kovrizhin, J. Chalker, Roderich Moessner. 2013

245 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We provide a complete and exact theoretical study of the dynamical structure factor of a twodimensional quantum spin liquid in gapless and gapped phases, as realized in Kitaev’s honeycomb model. We show that there are direct signatures—qualitative and quantitative—of the Majorana fermions and gauge fluxes emerging in this model. These include counterintuitive manifestations of quantum number fractionalization, such as a neutron scattering response with a gap even in the presence of gapless excitations, and a sharp component despite the fractionalization of electron spin. Our analysis identifies new varieties of the venerable x-ray edge problem and explores connections to the physics of quantum quenches.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5cac6de17e2cb12c7a8268d05b241239a2cbdb9a

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Condensed Matter Physics

Citations in the corpus

Kitaev materials (2017, unknown): “With an eye towards a material realization of the (pure) Kitaev model several experimental signatures have been discussed including the dynamical response [57, 58], whose distinct spectral gap can be probed via inelastic neutron scattering (INS) or electron spin resonance (ESR), the Raman response [”
Quantum spin liquids (2019, background): “The interaction of these low-energy visons with theMajoranas leads to a rather featureless spin excitation spectrum, as could be measured by neutrons (64).”
Fermionic response from fractionalization in an insulating two-dimensional magnet (2016, background): “fermions [7], which allows us to detect their Fermi statistics more directly than in other dynamical responses [6].”
Physics of the Kitaev Model: Fractionalization, Dynamic Correlations, and Material Connections (2017, background): “The recent surge in experimental efforts related to the physics of the Kitaev QSL, including synthesis of new materials, raises the hope that the near future will see many advances in the search for these elusive quantum states, and hopefully even the first unambiguously clear determination of a QSL”