Topological Nematic Phase Transition in Kitaev Magnets Under Applied Magnetic Fields

Abstract

We propose a scenario of realizing the toric code phase, which can be potentially utilized for fault-tolerant quantum computation, in candidate materials of Kitaev magnets. It is demonstrated that four-body interactions among Majorana fermions in the Kitaev spin liquid state, which are induced by applied magnetic fields as well as non-Kitaev-type exchange interactions, trigger a nematic phase transition of Majorana bonds without magnetic orders, accompanying the change of the Chern number from $\pm 1$ to zero. This gapful spin liquid state with zero Chern number is nothing but the toric code phase. Our result potentially explains the topological nematic transition recently observed in $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ via heat capacity measurements [O. Tanaka et al., arXiv:2007.06757].

arXiv comment13 pages, 8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Variational principle for optimal quantum controls in quantum metrology
• Kitaev Quantum Spin Liquids
• Evidence for the first-order topological phase transition in a Kitaev spin liquid candidate $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Dissipationless Spin Current Generation in Kitaev's Chiral Spin Liquid
• Thermodynamic evidence for field-angle dependent Majorana gap in a Kitaev spin liquid
• Electric probe for the toric code phase in Kitaev materials through the hyperfine interaction
• Polarization-dependent magnetic properties of periodically driven $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Emergent Quadrupolar Order in the Spin-$1/2$ Kitaev-Heisenberg Model
• Spin-phonon coupling and thermal Hall effect in the Kitaev model
• Magnetic field effects on the Kitaev model coupled to environment