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arXiv:1811.10895 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Majorana edge magnetization in the Kitaev honeycomb model

Tomonari Mizoguchi, Tohru Koma

Published May 15, 2019• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose an approach to detect the peculiarity of Majorana fermions at the edges of Kitaev magnets. As is well known, a pair of Majorana edge modes is realized when a single complex fermion splits into real and imaginary parts which are, respectively, localized at the left and right edges of a sample magnet. Reflecting both of this peculiarity of the Majorana fermions and the ground-state degeneracy caused by the existence of the Majorana edge zero modes, the spins at the edges of the sample magnet are expected to behave as a peculiar ``free'' spin which exhibits a unidirectional magnetization without any transverse magnetization when applied a sufficiently weak external magnetic field. For the Kitaev honeycomb model, we obtain the expression of the Majorana edge magnetization by relying on standard techniques to diagonalize a free fermion Hamiltonian. The magnetization profile thus obtained indeed shows the expected behavior. We also elucidate the relation between the Majorana edge flat band and the bulk winding number from a weak topological point of view.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.99.184418

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We propose an approach to detect the peculiarity of Majorana fermions at the edges of Kitaev magnets. As is well known, a pair of Majorana edge modes is realized when a single complex fermion splits into real and imaginary parts which are, respectively, localized at the left and right edges of a sample magnet. Reflecting both of this peculiarity of the Majorana fermions and the ground-state degeneracy caused by the existence of the Majorana edge zero modes, the spins at the edges of the sample magnet are expected to behave as a peculiar ``free'' spin which exhibits a unidirectional magnetization without any transverse magnetization when applied a sufficiently weak external magnetic field. For the Kitaev honeycomb model, we obtain the expression of the Majorana edge magnetization by relying on standard techniques to diagonalize a free fermion Hamiltonian. The magnetization profile thus obtained indeed shows the expected behavior. We also elucidate the relation between the Majorana edge flat band and the bulk winding number from a weak topological point of view.
We unveil an interesting example of topological flat bands of Majorana fermions in quantum spin liquids. We study the Kitaev model on a periodically depleted honeycomb lattice, under a magnetic field within the perturbation theory. The model can be straightforwardly extended while maintaining the exact solvability, and its ground state is a quantum spin liquid as on the honeycomb lattice. As fractionalized excitations, there are unpaired localized Majorana fermions in addition to the itinerant Majorana fermions and Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ fluxes. We show that, in the absence of the magnetic field, the Majorana fermions exhibit completely flat bands at zero energy, and by applying the magnetic field, these bands turn into topological flat bands with nonzero Chern number. By varying the anisotropy of the interactions and the magnitude of the magnetic field, we clarify that the system hosts a variety of topological phases that do not appear in the original honeycomb model. We emphasize that the topological flat bands underlying this rich topology come from the hybridization of the Majorana flat bands and unpaired Majorana fermions, which is unique to the flat bands of fractionalized excitations in quantum spin liquids. Our findings would stimulate the exploration of a new class of Kitaev materials exhibiting rich topology arising from topological Majorana flat bands.
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.
We study the possibility to realize a Majorana zero mode that is robust and may be easily manipulated for braiding in quantum computing in the ground state of the Kitaev model in this work. To achieve this we first apply a uniform [111] magnetic field to the gapless Kitaev model and turn the Kitaev model to an effective p + ip topological superconductor of spinons. We then study possible vortex binding in such system to a topologically trivial spot in the ground state. We consider two cases in the system: one is a vacancy and the other is a fully polarized spin. We show that in both cases, the system binds a vortex with the defect and a robust Majorana zero mode in the ground state at a weak uniform [111] magnetic field. The distribution and asymptotic behavior of these Majorana zero modes are studied. The Majorana zero modes in both cases decay exponentially in space, and are robust against local perturbations and other Majorana zero modes far away, which makes them promising candidates for braiding in topological quantum computing.
The Kitaev honeycomb model has attracted significant interest due to its quantum spin liquid ground state, fractionalized Majorana excitations, and topological properties. Motivated by these features, we introduce a quasi-one-dimensional Kitaev-like spin chain derived from a truncated honeycomb geometry. The resulting Majorana band structure contains both dispersive and flat bands, with a gap closing at a critical anisotropy that separates trivial and chiral topological phases. Under open boundary conditions, the topological regime hosts zero-energy edge modes protected by chiral symmetry, placing the system in the BDI symmetry class with a quantized winding number. In the excited spectrum, localized plaquette modes emerge near zero energy and can be tuned by introducing domains of negative plaquettes. The dynamical spin correlation function reveals broad continua associated with fractionalized excitations, together with characteristic low-energy spectral weight from edge Majorana modes. These features distinguish the present system from conventional Heisenberg spin chains and provide experimentally relevant fingerprints of chiral topological order. Our model thus establishes a conceptual bridge between the two-dimensional Kitaev spin liquid and Kitaev's one-dimensional quantum wire.
We study the possibility to realize Majorana zero mode that is robust and may be easily manipulated for braiding in quantum computing in the ground state of the Kitaev model in this work. To achieve this we first apply a uniform conical magnetic field to the gapless Kitaev model and turn the Kitaev model to an effective p+ip topological superconductor of spinons. We then study possible vortex binding in such system to a topologically trivial spot in the ground state. We consider two cases in the system. One is a vacancy and the other is a fully polarized spin. We show that in both cases, the system binds a vortex with the defect and a robust Majorana zero mode in the ground state at a weak uniform conical magnetic field. The distribution and asymptotic behavior of these Majorana zero modes is studied. The Majorana zero modes in both cases decay exponentially in space, and are robust against local perturbations and other Majorana zero modes far away, which makes them promissing candidate for braiding in topological quantum computing.
We propose Majorana-assisted nonlocal spin correlation as a manifestation of Majorana nonlocality in quasi-one-dimensional (1D) Kitaev spin liquids. Focusing on the flux-free sector of the Kitaev honeycomb model in a quasi-1D geometry, we uncover its topological nature and show that it hosts Majorana zero modes localized at both ends, which are stabilized by finite-size-induced topology. We further show that the nonlocal Majorana fermion parity operator, PMF=iγLγRP_{\text{MF}}=iγ_{\text{L}}γ_{\text{R}}PMF​=iγL​γR​, is mapped to a nonlocal spin-string operator, producing an end-to-end spin correlation proportional to the product of PMFP_{\text{MF}}PMF​ and total fermion parity operators when local perturbations remove redundant ground-state degeneracies while preserving the Majorana and total fermion parities in the flux-free sector. Numerical calculations confirm a finite nonlocal spin correlation generated by these Majorana zero modes without any local magnetization. Our results establish a concrete signature of intrinsic Majorana nonlocality in quantum spin liquids.