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Register a new userUniversal Thermodynamics in the Kitaev Fractional Liquid
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In the Kitaev honeycomb model, the quantum spin fractionalizes into itinerant Majorana and gauge flux spontaneously upon cooling, leading to rich experimental ramifications at finite temperature and an upsurge of research interest. In this work, we employ the exponential tensor renormalization group approach to explore the Kitaev model under various perturbations, including the external fields, Heisenberg, and the off-diagonal couplings that are common in the Kitaev materials. Through large-scale manybody calculations, we find a Kitaev fractional liquid at intermediate temperature that is robust against perturbations. The fractional liquid exhibits universal thermodynamic behaviors, including the fractional thermal entropy, metallic specific heat, and an intermediate-temperature Curie law of magnetic susceptibility. The emergent universal susceptibility behavior, with a modified Curie constant, can be ascribed to the strongly fluctuating $mathbb{Z}_2$ fluxes as well as the extremely short-ranged and bond-directional spin correlations. With this insight, we revisit the susceptibility measurements of Na$_2$IrO$_3$ and $alpha$-RuCl$_3$, and find evident signatures of finite-temperature fractionalization and ferromagnetic Kitaev couplings. Moreover, the peculiar spin correlation in the fractional liquid corresponds to a stripy structure factor which rotates in the extended Brillouin zone as the spin component changes. Therefore, our findings encourage future experimental exploration of fractional liquid in the Kitaev materials by thermodynamic measurements and spin-resolved structure factor probes.
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Two- and three-dimensional Kitaev magnets are prototypical frustrated quantum spin systems, in which the original spin degrees of freedom fractionalize into Majorana fermions and a $mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field -- a purely local phenomenon that reveals itself as a thermodynamic crossover at a temperature scale set by the strength of the bond-directional interactions. For conventional Kitaev magnets, the low-temperature thermodynamics reveals a second transition at which the $mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field orders and the system enters a spin liquid ground state. Here we discuss an explicit example that goes beyond this paradigmatic scenario -- the $mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field is found to be subject to geometric frustration, the thermal ordering transition is suppressed, and an extensive residual entropy arises. Deep in the quantum regime, at temperatures of the order of one per mil of the interaction strength, the degeneracy in the gauge sector is lifted by a subtle interplay between the gauge field and the Majorana fermions, resulting in the formation of a Majorana metal. We discuss the thermodynamic signatures of this physics obtained from large-scale, sign-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations.
The ground-state ordering and dynamics of the two-dimensional (2D) S=1/2 frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet Cs_2CuCl_4 is explored using neutron scattering in high magnetic fields. We find that the dynamic correlations show a highly dispersive continuum of excited states, characteristic of the RVB state, arising from pairs of S=1/2 spinons. Quantum renormalization factors for the excitation energies (1.65) and incommensuration (0.56) are large.
The search for fractionalization in quantum spin liquids largely relies on their decoupling with the environment. However, the spin-lattice interaction is inevitable in a real setting. While the Majorana fermion evades a strong decay due to the gradient form of spin-lattice coupling, the study of the phonon dynamics may serve as an indirect probe of fractionalization of spin degrees of freedom. Here we propose that the signatures of fractionalization can be seen in the sound attenuation and the Hall viscosity. Despite the fact that both quantities can be related to the imaginary part of the phonon self-energy, their origins are quite different, and the time-reversal symmetry breaking is required for the Hall viscosity. First, we compute the sound attenuation due to a phonon scattering off of a pair of Majorana fermions and show that it is linear in temperature ($sim T$). We argue that it has a particular angular dependence providing the information about the spin-lattice coupling and the low-energy Majorana fermion spectrum. The observable effects in the absence of time-reversal symmetry are then analyzed. We obtain the phonon Hall viscosity term from the microscopic Hamiltonian with time-reversal symmetry breaking term. Importantly, the Hall viscosity term mixes the longitudinal and transverse phonon modes and renormalize the spectrum in a unique way, which may be probed in spectroscopy measurement.
Bethe ansatz and bosonization procedures are used to describe the thermodynamics of the strong-coupled Hubbard chain in the textit{spin-incoherent} Luttinger liquid (LL) regime: $J(equiv 4t^2/U)ll k_B Tll E_F$, where $t$ is the hopping amplitude, $U(gg t)$ is the repulsive on-site Coulomb interaction, and $k_B T (E_Fsim t)$ is the thermal (Fermi) energy. We introduce a fractional Landau LL approach, whose $U=infty$ fixed point is exactly mapped onto an ideal gas with two species obeying the Haldane-Wu textit{exclusion} fractional statistics. This phenomenological approach sheds light on the behavior of several thermodynamic properties in the spin-incoherent LL regime: specific heat, charge compressibility, magnetic susceptibility, and Drude weight. In fact, besides the hopping (mass) renormalization, the fractional Landau LL parameters, due to quasiparticle interaction, are determined and relationships with velocities of holons and spinons are unveiled. The specific heat thus obtained is in very good agreement with previous density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations of the $t$-$J$ model in the spin-incoherent regime. A phase diagram is provided and two thermodynamic paths to access this regime clarifies both the numerical and analytical procedures. Further, we show that the high-$T$ limit of the fractional Landau LL entropy and chemical potential exhibit the expected results of the $t$-$J$ model, under the condition $Ugg k_B T$. Lastly, finite-temperature Lanczos simulations of the single-particle distribution function confirm the characteristics of the spin-incoherent regime and the high-$T$ limit observed in previous DMRG studies.
Significant efforts have focused on the magnetic excitations of relativistic Mott insulators, predicted to realize the Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL). This exactly solvable model involves a highly entangled state resulting from bond-dependent Ising interactions that produce excitations which are non-local in terms of spin flips. A key challenge in real materials is identifying the relative size of the non-Kitaev terms and their role in the emergence or suppression of fractional excitations. Here, we identify the energy and temperature boundaries of non-Kitaev interactions by direct comparison of the Raman susceptibility of RuCl3 with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) results for the Kitaev QSLs. Moreover, we further confirm the fractional nature of the magnetic excitations, which is given by creating a pair of fermionic quasiparticles. Interestingly, this fermionic response remains valid in the non-Kitaev range. Our results and focus on the use of the Raman susceptibility provide a stringent new test for future theoretical and experimental studies of QSLs.
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