Electrical Probes of the Non-Abelian Spin Liquid in Kitaev Materials
Abstract
Recent thermal-conductivity measurements evidence a magnetic-field-induced non-Abelian spin-liquid phase in the Kitaev material α−RuCl₃. Although the platform is a good Mott insulator, we propose experiments that electrically probe the spin liquid's hallmark chiral Majorana edge state and bulk anyons, including their exotic exchange statistics. We specifically introduce circuits that exploit interfaces between electrically active systems and Kitaev materials to "perfectly" convert electrons from the former into emergent fermions in the latter—thereby enabling variations of transport probes invented for topological superconductors and fractional quantum-Hall states. Along the way, we resolve puzzles in the literature concerning interacting Majorana fermions, and also develop an anyon-interferometry framework that incorporates nontrivial energy-partitioning effects. Our results illuminate a partial pathway toward topological quantum computation with Kitaev materials.
Additional Information
© 2020 Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Received 5 March 2020; revised 12 May 2020; accepted 19 May 2020; published 17 July 2020. It is a pleasure to thank Chao-Ming Jian, Stevan Nadj-Perge, Achim Rosch, Ady Stern, and especially Paul Fendley for stimulating conversations. This work is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, under the EPiQS initiative, Grant No. GBMF4304; the Army Research Office under Grant No. W911NF-17-1-0323; the National Science Foundation through Grants No. DMR-1723367 (J. A.) and No. DMR-1848336 (R. M.); the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, a NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant No. GBMF1250; the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative, Grant No. GBMF8682 to J. A. B. M. H. acknowledges support from the Department of Energy under the Early Career program (Grant No. DE-SC0018115). D. M. acknowledges support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation EPiQS Initiative, Grant No. GBMF9069. Finally, we acknowledge the 2018 Erice Conference on Majorana Fermions and Topological Materials Science, where this work was initiated.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevX.10.031014.pdf
Submitted - 2002.01944.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 101532
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200225-103848261
- GBMF4304
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- W911NF-17-1-0323
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- DMR-1723367
- NSF
- DMR-1848336
- NSF
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)
- GBMF1250
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech
- GBMF8682
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- DE-SC0018115
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- GBMF9069
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Created
-
2020-02-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics