Topological aspects, widely discussed in relation to fermionic systems, need not be restricted to the ground state of electrons. The excitation spectrum in certain frustrated quantum magnets could be topological in nature. The Kitaev-Heisenberg model is a cornerstone in the study of quantum spin-liquid candidate materials such as Na${}_{2}$IrO${}_{3}$ and RuCl${}_{3}$. Here, the author presents the interesting and surprising result that the quasiparticles in the ferromagnetic Kitaev-Heisenberg model have a nontrivial Berry curvature leading to a nonzero Chern-number topological invariant. Consequently, there are chiral edge excitations along the zigzag edge, which can be detected in scattering and in thermal- or spin-transport experiments.
Topological aspects, widely discussed in relation to fermionic systems, need not be restricted to the ground state of electrons. The excitation spectrum in certain frustrated quantum magnets could be topological in nature. The Kitaev-Heisenberg model is a cornerstone in the study of quantum spin-liquid candidate materials such as Na2IrO3 and RuCl3. Here, the author presents the interesting and surprising result that the quasiparticles in the ferromagnetic Kitaev-Heisenberg model have a nontrivial Berry curvature leading to a nonzero Chern-number topological invariant. Consequently, there are chiral edge excitations along the zigzag edge, which can be detected in scattering and in thermal- or spin-transport experiments.
Translation-enriched Z2 spin liquids and topological vison bands: Possible application to α-RuCl3
Inspired by experiments on the magnetic field induced phases of the spin-orbit coupled 2d Mott insulator α-RuCl3, we study some general aspects of gapped Z2 Quantum Spin Liquids (QSL) enriched by lattice translation symmetry. We show that there are 12 distinct such phases with different implementations of translation symmetry. In some of these phases the vison excitations of this QSL may form topological Chern bands. We explore a phenomenological description of a putative Z2 QSL as a candidate ground state at intermediate magnetic fields in α-RuCl3. This state has broad continuum spectra in neutron scattering, a "bosonic" thermal Hall signal that goes to zero at zero temperature, and a natural connection with a zigzag magnetic ordered state, all of which are also seen in α-RuCl3. On general grounds continuum scattering will also be seen at multiple points in the Brillouin zone in this state.
The study of topological magnetic excitations have attracted widespread attention in the past few years.The wide variety of ground state phases realized in different two-dimensional magnets have emerged as versatile platforms for realizing magnetic analogues of topological phases uncovered in electronic systems over the past two decades.Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya(DM) interactions, that are ubiquitous in many quantum magnets, and has been demonstrated to induce a non-trivial topology in the magnetic excitations in many quantum magnets.In particular, signatures of DM-interaction induced topological features observed in the dispersion of magnetic excitations in the geometrically frustrated Shastry-Sutherland compound SrCu 2 (BO 3 ) 2 and honeycomb ferromagnet CrI 3 have provided the motivation behind the bulk of the research presented in this thesis.In the first chapter we introduce the background and motivation of our study.We showed that the vastly available materials with a possibility of nonzero symmetry allowed DM-interaction motivate us to study the minimal models of interacting spins related to the materials.In the second chapter we have described the methods that is used to study the spin systems.To describe the spin excitations in the long-range ordered system and dimerized system, we use Holstein-Primakoff transformation and bond-operator formalism respectively.The Schwinger Boson mean field theory is applicable for any generic magnetic ground state and useful to study the system at high temperatures compared with Holstein-Primakoff transformation.After transforming the Hamiltonian into a quadratic bosonic Hamiltonian, it is diagonalized by using Bogoliubov-Valatin transformation.Different observables like Berry-curvature, Chern-number, Dynamical Spin structure factor etc. are cal-vii culated by using the single particle wave-function obtained from Bogoliubov-Valatin transformation.A non-zero Berry curvature is a signature of topologically protected edge states in a stripe geometry of a lattice and a systematic way of calculating edge states is also explained in the second chapter.Moreover in the second chapter the usefulness of symmetry in obtaining band degeneracies and the allowed spin-spin interaction terms are also described.The past theoretical studies show the presence of topological magnons in honeycomb ferromagnetic models due to presence of DM-interaction on a next-nearest neighbour bonds.Recently this kind of DM-interaction is detected in the honeycomb ferromagnet CrI 3 .This type of DM-interaction induces chiral edge states of magnon in the system and so we named it as chiral DM-interaction.In the third chapter we show that breaking of inversion symmetry at the center of honeycomb structure gives rise to a extra DM-interaction which we named as anti-chiral DM-interaction.We studied the system by using Schwinger Boson mean field theory and Holstein-Primakoff transformation and show that when the antichiral DM-interaction dominates over the chiral DM-interaction, the direction of velocity of the edge states become in the same direction (antichiral edge states).Due to conservation of total number of spins in the system a bulk current flows in the opposite direction relative to the antichiral edge current.In this study we suggested the way to break the inversion symmetries in the materials CrSrTe 3 , CrGrTe 3 , AFe 2 (PO 4 ) 2 (A=Ba, Cs, K, La) to achieve antichiral DM-interaction.The presence of antichiral edge states can be detected by using inelastic neutron scattering by detecting the band tilting at K and K points of magnon bands.Moreover we showed that spin noise spectroscopy at the edges is useful measurements to detect the presence of antichiral edge modes.Magnetic force microscopy is also a promising tool to detect the antichiral magnons at edges.The underlying spin-Hamiltonian of the antiferromagnetic systems in the materials like rare-earth tetraborides(RB 4 , R=Er,Tm) and U 2 Pd 2 In can be described by using extended Shastry-Sutherland models.In previous theoretical studies it is shown that there is a non-collinear spin-state known as flux state exists in the Shastry-Sutherland model in presence of out of plane DM-interaction.Although the presence of perpendicular component of DM-interactions in the rare-earth materials are not known, it can be induced artificially by using circularly polarized light or using heavy-metal alloys.In the fourth chapter, we studied the magnetic excitations in the flux state on Shastry-Sutherland lattice in-First of all, I would like to thank my research supervisor Prof. Pinaki Sengupta for his continuous support and guidance throughout my Ph.D. study on and off the field.whenever I went to his office with a problem he always welcomed me and assisted me.He has encouraged and inspired me to become an independent researcher and developed my critical thinking.I am really grateful to him as a person who introduced me the field of research.Moreover my scientific writing and presentation skills also improved due to his suggestions.I am really very thankful for being so flexible and allowing me to choose the work and project which interests me most.
The possible ground states of the undoped and doped Kitaev–Heisenberg model on a triangular lattice are studied. For the undoped system, a combination of the numerical exact diagonalization calculation and the four-sublattice transformation analysis suggests one possible exotic phase and four magnetically ordered phases, including a collinear stripe pattern and a noncollinear spiral pattern in the global phase diagram. The exotic phase near the antiferromagnetic (AF) Kitaev point is further investigated using the Schwinger-fermion mean-field method, and we obtain an energetically favorable Z 2 chiral spin liquid with a Chern number ±2 as a promising candidate. At finite doping, we find that the AF Heisenberg coupling supports an s -wave or a -wave superconductivity (SC), while the AF and the ferromagnetic Kitaev interactions favor a -wave SC and a time-reversal invariant topological p -wave SC, respectively. Possible experimental realizations and related candidate materials are also discussed.
The Kitaev model is an exactly solvable quantum spin model within the language of constrained real fermions. In spite of numerous studies for magnetic fields along special orientations, there is a limited amount of knowledge on the complete field-angle characterization, which can provide valuable information on the existence of fractionalized excitations. For this purpose, we first study the pure ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kitaev models for arbitrary external magnetic field directions via a mean-field theory, showing that there are many topological phases with different (or zero) Chern numbers, depending on the magnetic field strength and orientations. However, a realistic description of the candidate Kitaev materials, within the edge-sharing octahedra paradigm, requires additional coupling terms, including a large off-diagonal term $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$ along with possible anisotropic corrections ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{p}$. It is therefore not sufficient to rely on the topological properties of the bare Kitaev model as the basis for the observed thermal Hall-conductivity signals, and an understanding of these extended Kitaev models with a complete field response is demanded. Starting from the zero-field phase diagram of $\mathrm{K}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}}_{p}$ models, we identify, besides the Kitaev spin liquid phase, antiferromagnetic zigzag, ferromagnetic phases, as well as an unusual Kitaev(-$\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$) spin liquid phase. The magnetic field response of these phases for arbitrary field orientations provides a remarkably rich phase diagram. For an extended parameter range and just above the critical field where the zigzag phase is suppressed, there is an intermediate phase region with suppressed energy gaps and substantial spin fractionalization. To comply our findings with experiments, we also reproduce a large asymmetry in the extent of this intermediate phases specifically for the two different field directions $\ensuremath{\theta}=\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}{60}^{o}$ with respect to the normal to the plane of the honeycomb lattice.
We study quantum phase transitions in the honeycomb Kitaev model under a magnetic field, focusing on the topological nature of Majorana fermion excitations. We find a gapless phase between the low-field gapless quantum spin liquid and the high-field gapped forced-ferromagnetic state for the antiferromagnetic Kitaev model in the [001] field by using the Majorana mean-field theory, in conjunction with the exact diagonalization and the spin-wave theory supporting the validity of this approach. The transition between the two gapless phases is driven by a topological change of the Majorana spectrum---line node formation interconnecting two Majorana cones. The peculiar change of the Majorana band topology is rationalized by a sign change of the effective Kitaev coupling by the magnetic field, which does not occur in the ferromagnetic Kitaev case. Upon tilting the magnetic field away from [001], the two gapless phases become gapped and topologically nontrivial, characterized by nonzero Chern numbers with different signs. The sign change of the Chern number leads to a reversal of the thermal edge current in the half-quantized thermal Hall effect.
Inspired by experiments on the magnetic field induced phases of the spin-orbit coupled two dimension (2D) Mott insulator 𝛼−RuCl3, we study some general aspects of gapped 𝑍2 quantum spin liquids (QSL) enriched by lattice translation symmetry. We show that there are 12 distinct such phases with different implementations of translation symmetry. In some of these phases the vison excitations of this QSL may form topological Chern bands. We explore a phenomenological description of a putative 𝑍2 QSL as a candidate ground state at intermediate magnetic fields in 𝛼−RuCl3. This state has broad continuum spectra in neutron scattering, a “bosonic” thermal Hall signal that goes to zero at zero temperature, and is naturally proximate to a zigzag magnetic ordered state, all of which are also seen in 𝛼−RuCl3. On general grounds, continuum scattering will also be seen at multiple points in the Brillouin zone in this state.