Geometric description of the Kitaev honeycomb lattice model

Abstract

It is widely accepted that topological superconductors can only have an effective interpretation in terms of curved geometry rather than gauge fields due to their charge neutrality. This approach is commonly employed in order to investigate their properties, such as the behaviour of their energy currents. Nevertheless, it is not known how accurately curved geometry can describe actual microscopic models. Here, we demonstrate that the low-energy properties of the Kitaev honeycomb lattice model, a topological superconductor that supports localised Majorana zero modes at its vortex excitations, are faithfully described in terms of Riemann-Cartan geometry. In particular, we show analytically that the continuum limit of the model is given in terms of the Majorana version of the Dirac Hamiltonian coupled to both curvature and torsion. We numerically establish the accuracy of the geometric description for a wide variety of couplings of the microscopic model. Our work opens up the opportunity to accurately predict dynamical properties of the Kitaev model from its effective geometric description.

arXiv comment16 pages, 10 figures

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• Torsional Landau levels and geometric anomalies in condensed matter Weyl systems
• Probing non-Hermitian phase transitions in curved space via quench dynamics
• Chiral Spin-Chain Interfaces Exhibiting Event-Horizon Physics
• Continuous transition between Ising magnetic order and a chiral spin liquid
• Equivalence between vortices, twists and chiral gauge fields in Kitaev's honeycomb lattice model
• Topological phase transitions of semimetal states in effective field theory models
• Emerging (2+1)D massive graviton in graphene-like systems
• An effective curved space-time geometric theory of generic twist angle graphene with application to a rotating bilayer configuration
• Geometric and computational aspects of chiral topological quantum matter