We study the energy-density dynamics at finite momentum of the two-dimensional Kitaev spin model on the honeycomb lattice. Due to fractionalization of magnetic moments, the energy relaxation occurs through mobile Majorana matter, coupled to a static
Z2 gauge field. At finite temperatures, the
Z2 flux excitations act as a thermally induced disorder, which strongly affects the energy dynamics. We show that sufficiently far above the flux proliferation temperature, but not yet in the high-temperature classical regime, disordered gauge configurations modify the coherent low-temperature energy-density dynamics into a form which is almost diffusive, with a diffusion kernel that is nearly momentum independent, but which remains retarded, primarily due to the presence of two distinct relaxation channels of particle-hole and particle-particle nature. Relations to the thermal conductivity are clarified. Our analysis is based on complementary calculations in the low-temperature homogeneous gauge configuration and a mean-field treatment of thermal gauge fluctuations, valid above the flux proliferation temperature.
We study the dynamical thermal conductivity of the two-dimensional Kitaev spin model on the honeycomb lattice. We find a strongly temperature dependent low-frequency spectral intensity as a direct consequence of fractionalization of spins into mobile Majorana matter and a static
Z2 gauge field. The latter acts as an emergent thermally activated disorder, leading to the appearance of a pseudogap which closes in the thermodynamic limit, indicating a dissipative heat conductor. Our analysis is based on complementary calculations of the current correlation function, comprising exact diagonalization by means of a complete summation over all gauge sectors, as well as a phenomenological mean-field treatment of thermal gauge fluctuations, valid at intermediate and high temperatures. The results will also be contrasted against the conductivity discarding gauge fluctuations.
The Kitaev honeycomb model provides a paradigmatic example of an exactly solvable quantum spin liquid (QSL), where spins fractionalize into itinerant Majorana fermions coupled to a static background of
Z2 gauge fluxes. This model has attracted significant interest due to its potential experimental realization in spin-orbit Mott insulators like $\ensuremath{\alpha}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{\mathrm{RuCl}}_{3}$. Among various experimental techniques, ultrasound measurements of sound attenuation have emerged as a promising approach to detect spin fractionalization in these materials. However, deviations from the ideal Kitaev model, often due to disorder, introduce localized modes that dominate the low-energy physics. To investigate these effects, we calculate the sound attenuation coefficient in the site-disordered Kitaev honeycomb model under an applied magnetic field that breaks time-reversal symmetry. Our analysis reveals that quasilocalized modes from quasivacancies impact the phonon self-energy, yet the sound attenuation coefficient maintains its sixfold symmetry and linear temperature dependence at low temperatures, even with disorder. This robustness underscores sound attenuation's reliability as a probe for spin fractionalization. Furthermore, we show that this linear behavior persists under an external field and in the random-flux sector, highlighting the persistent influence of fractionalized excitations, despite disorder.
In recent years, several magnetic Mott insulators with strong spin-orbit coupling were suggested to be proximate to the Kitaev quantum spin liquid, whose one of the most exciting features is the fractionalization of spin excitations into itinerant Majorana fermions and static Z2 fluxes. Unfortunately, the ground states of these systems cannot be easily captured by experiment, remaining featureless to conventional local probes. Here, we propose to study the signatures of fractionalized excitations by exploiting their coupling to the lattice vibrations, dubbed magnetoelastic coupling, which arises from the fact that the interaction between spins depends on the relative distance between them. We argue that the magnetoelastic coupling can lead to the distinct modification of the phonon dynamics, which can be observed by measuring renormalized phonon spectrum, the sound attenuation, and the phonon Hall viscosity. This makes the phonon dynamics a promising tool for the characterization and identification of quantum spin liquid phases. In this work, we focus on the magnetoelastic effects in the three-dimensional Kitaev model realized on the hyperhoneycomb lattice. The hyperhoneycomb Kitaev spin liquid is particularly interesting since the strong Kitaev interaction was observed in the Kitaev magnet β-Li2IrO3, for which the spin-orbit entangled Jeff = 1/2 moments of iridium ions form precisely the hyperhoneycomb lattice.
We study the dynamical thermal conductivity of the Kitaev spin model on a two-leg ladder. In contrast to the majority of conventional one-dimensional spin systems, we show the ladder to exhibit no ballistic channel and a zero-frequency pseudogap. This is a direct consequence of the fractionalization of spins into mobile Majorana matter and a static
Z2 gauge field, which acts as an emergent thermally activated disorder. Our finding rests on complementary calculations of the current correlation function, comprising a phenomenological mean-field treatment of thermal gauge fluctuations, a complete summation over all gauge sectors, as well as exact diagonalization of the original spin model. The results will also be contrasted against the conductivity discarding gauge fluctuations.
A prominent feature of quantum spin liquids is fractionalization of the spin degree of freedom. Fractionalized excitations have their own dynamics in different energy scales, and hence, affect finite-temperature (
T) properties in a peculiar manner even in the paramagnetic state harboring the quantum spin liquid state. We here present a comprehensive theoretical study of the spin dynamics in a wide
T range for the Kitaev model on a honeycomb lattice, whose ground state is a quantum spin liquid. In this model, the fractionalization occurs to break up quantum spins into itinerant matter fermions and localized
Z2 fluxes, which results in two crossovers at very different
T scales. Extending the previous study for the isotropic coupling case [J. Yoshitake, J. Nasu, and Y. Motome, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 157203 (2016)], we calculate the dynamical spin structure factor $S(\mathbf{q},\ensuremath{\omega})$, the NMR relaxation rate
1/T1, and the magnetic susceptibility $\ensuremath{\chi}$ while changing the anisotropy in the exchange coupling constants, by using the dynamical mean-field theory based on a Majorana fermion representation. We describe the details of the methodology including the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method for computing dynamical spin correlations and the maximum entropy method for analytic continuation. We confirm that the combined method provides accurate results in a wide
T range including the region where the spins are fractionalized. We find that also in the anisotropic cases the system exhibits peculiar behaviors below the high-
T crossover whose temperature is comparable to the average of the exchange constants: $S(\mathbf{q},\ensuremath{\omega})$ shows an inelastic response at the energy scale of the averaged exchange constant,
1/T1 continues to grow even though the equal-time spin correlations are saturated and almost
T independent, and $\ensuremath{\chi}$ deviates from the Curie-Weiss behavior. In particular, when the exchange interaction in one direction is stronger than the other two, the dynamical quantities exhibit qualitatively different
T dependences from the isotropic case at low
T, reflecting the opposite parity between the flux-free ground state and the flux-excited state, and a larger energy cost for flipping a spin in the strong interaction direction. On the other hand, when the exchange anisotropy is in the opposite way, the results are qualitatively similar to those in the isotropic case. All these behaviors manifest the spin fractionalization in the paramagnetic region. Among them, the dichotomy between the static and dynamical spin correlations is unusual behavior hardly seen in conventional magnets. We discuss the relation between the dichotomy and the spatial configuration of the
Z2 gauge fields. Our results could stimulate further experimental and theoretical analyses of candidate materials for the Kitaev quantum spin liquids.