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arXiv:1107.0981 · Physical Review B

Exactly solvable topological chiral spin liquid with random exchange

Victor Chua, Gregory A. Fiete

Published Nov 28, 2011• 20 citations
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Abstract

We extend the Yao-Kivelson decorated honeycomb lattice Kitaev model [H. Yao and S. A. Kivelson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 247203 (2007)] of an exactly solvable chiral spin liquid by including disordered exchange couplings. We have determined the phase diagram of this system and found that disorder enlarges the region of the topological non-Abelian phase with finite Chern number. We study the energy level statistics as a function of disorder and other parameters in the Hamiltonian, and show that the phase transition between the non-Abelian and Abelian phases of the model at large disorder can be associated with pair annihilation of extended states at zero energy. Analogies to integer quantum Hall systems, topological Anderson insulators, and disordered topological Chern insulators are discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.84.195129

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We extend the Yao-Kivelson decorated honeycomb lattice Kitaev model [H. Yao and S. A. Kivelson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 247203 (2007)] of an exactly solvable chiral spin liquid by including disordered exchange couplings. We have determined the phase diagram of this system and found that disorder enlarges the region of the topological non-Abelian phase with finite Chern number. We study the energy level statistics as a function of disorder and other parameters in the Hamiltonian, and show that the phase transition between the non-Abelian and Abelian phases of the model at large disorder can be associated with pair annihilation of extended states at zero energy. Analogies to integer quantum Hall systems, topological Anderson insulators, and disordered topological Chern insulators are discussed.
We study the finite-temperature nature of a quantum phase transition between an Abelian and a non-Abelian topological phase in an exactly solvable model of the chiral spin liquid of Yao and Kivelson [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 247203 (2007)]. As it is exactly solvable, this model can serve as a testbed for developing better measures for describing topological quantum phase transitions. We use the global flux and entanglement entropy to characterize this phase transition, and we discuss to what extent the existence of a topologically ordered ground state with non-Abelian excitations is revealed at finite temperature.
In this work we study the phase diagram of the Kekul\'e-Kitaev model. The model is defined on a honeycomb lattice with bond-dependent anisotropic exchange interactions, making it exactly solvable in terms of Majorana representation of spins, in close analogy to the Kitaev model. However, the energy spectrum of Majorana fermions has a multiband structure characterized by Chern numbers 0, $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}1$, and $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}2$. We obtained the phase diagram of the model in the plane of exchange couplings and in the presence of a magnetic field and found chiral topological and trivial spin-liquid ground states. In the absence of magnetic field most of the phase diagram is a trivial gapped phase continuously connected to an Abelian phase, while in the presence of the magnetic field a topological phase arises. Furthermore, motivated by recent thermal measurements on the spin-liquid candidate $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{-}{\mathrm{RuCl}}_{3}$, we calculated the thermal Hall conductivity at different regimes of parameters and temperatures and found the latter is quantized over a wide range of temperatures.
Topological insulator phases of non-interacting particles have been generalized from periodic crystals to amorphous lattices, which raises the question whether topologically ordered quantum many-body phases may similarly exist in amorphous systems? Here we construct a soluble chiral amorphous quantum spin liquid by extending the Kitaev honeycomb model to random lattices with fixed coordination number three. The model retains its exact solubility but the presence of plaquettes with an odd number of sides leads to a spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry. We unearth a rich phase diagram displaying Abelian as well as a non-Abelian quantum spin liquid phases with a remarkably simple ground state flux pattern. Furthermore, we show that the system undergoes a finite-temperature phase transition to a conducting thermal metal state and discuss possible experimental realisations.
Thermodynamic properties of chiral spin liquids are investigated for a variant of the Kitaev model defined on a decorated honeycomb lattice. Using the quantum Monte Carlo simulation, we find that the model exhibits a finite-temperature phase transition associated with the time reversal symmetry breaking, in both topologically trivial and nontrivial regions. Numerical results for the Chern number and the thermal Hall conductivity indicate that the phase transition changes from a continuous to a discontinuous transition as we vary the coupling constants to reach the non-Abelian phase coming from the Abelian phase of the model. In addition, we find as a diagnostic of the chiral spin liquids, successive crossovers with multistage entropy release above the critical temperature, which indicates that the hierarchical fractionalization of a quantum spin occurs differently between the two regions.
We show that the decorated honeycomb (star) lattice supports a number of topological insulating phases with a nontrivial Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ invariant and time-reversal symmetry protected gapless edge modes. We investigate the stability of these phases with respect to various symmetry-breaking perturbations and demonstrate the connection to the recent discovery of an exactly solvable S=1/2S=1/2S=1/2 chiral spin-liquid model [Yao and Kivelson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 247203 (2007)] with non-Abelian and Abelian excitations on the same lattice at strong interaction strength. Our work highlights the relationship between noninteracting topological band insulators and strongly interacting topologically ordered spin systems, and points to promising avenues for enlarging the number of known examples of both.
We have proposed an exactly solvable model defined on 2D decorated lattices of two types. The ground-state phase diagram of the system includes different topological phases with gapless chiral edge states. We show that two types of chiral spin liquid with gapless edge modes are realized on lattices with different symmetry. The phase transition between the topological phase with chiral gapped (Chern number zero) and the topological phase with chiral gapless edge modes (Chern number ) occurs in the model on the square (symmetric) decorated lattice. On the rectangular (asymmetric) decorated lattice the topological phase is defined by a chiral gapless (gapped) edge mode in the x ( y ) direction and a chiral gapped (gapless) edge mode in another y ( x ) direction. We show that a Kitaev model on a decorated asymmetric square lattice exhibits the quantum phase transition between topological phases with equal Chern numbers.