Thermal anyon interferometry in phonon-coupled Kitaev spin liquids

Abstract

Recent theoretical studies inspired by experiments on the Kitaev magnet α-RuCl₃ highlight the nontrivial impact of phonons on the thermal Hall conductivity of chiral topological phases. Here we introduce mixed mesoscopic-macroscopic devices that allow refined thermal-transport probes of non-Abelian spin liquids with Ising topological order. These devices feature a quantum-coherent mesoscopic region with negligible phonon conductance, flanked by macroscopic lobes that facilitate efficient thermalization between chiral Majorana edge modes and bulk phonons. We show that our devices enable (i) accurate determination of the quantized thermal Hall conductivity, (ii) identification of non-Abelian Ising anyons via the temperature dependence of the thermal conductance, and most interestingly (iii) single-anyon detection through heat-based anyon interferometry. Analogous results apply broadly to phonon-coupled chiral topological orders.

Files

Additional details