Chiral Spin Order in Kondo-Heisenberg systems

Abstract

We demonstrate that Kondo-Heisenberg systems, consisting of itinerant electrons and localized magnetic moments (Kondo impurities), can be used as a principally new platform to realize scalar chiral spin order. The underlying physics is governed by a competition of the Ruderman-Kittel-Kosuya-Yosida (RKKY) indirect exchange interaction between the local moments with the direct Heisenberg one. When the direct exchange is weak and RKKY dominates the isotropic system is in the disordered phase. A moderately large direct exchange leads to an Ising-type phase transition to the phase with chiral spin order. Our finding paves the way towards pioneering experimental realizations of the chiral spin liquid in low dimensional systems with spontaneously broken time reversal symmetry.

6 (main text) + 5 (supplementary material) pages, 3 figures; v2: amended Introduction, extended Conclusions, added/corrected references

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