Unveiling the S=3/2 Kitaev honeycomb spin liquids.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35780167.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-31503-0 and PMC identifier 9250503.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The S=3/2 Kitaev honeycomb model (KHM) is a quantum spin liquid (QSL) state coupled to a static Z<sub>2</sub> gauge field. Employing an SO(6) Majorana representation of spin3/2's, we find an exact representation of the conserved plaquette fluxes in terms of static Z<sub>2</sub> gauge fields akin to the S=1/2 KHM which enables us to treat the remaining interacting matter fermion sector in a parton mean-field theory. We uncover a ground-state phase diagram consisting of gapped and gapless QSLs. Our parton description is in quantitative agreement with numerical simulations, and is furthermore corroborated by the addition of a [001] single ion anisotropy (SIA) which continuously connects the gapless Dirac QSL of our model with that of the S=1/2 KHM. In the presence of a weak [111] SIA, we discuss an emergent chiral QSL within a perturbation theory.