Abstract The S = 1/2 Kitaev honeycomb model has attracted significant attention as an exactly solvable example with a quantum spin liquid ground state. In an properly oriented external magnetic field, the system exhibits chiral Majorana edge modes with an associated quantized thermal Hall conductance, and a distinct spin-disordered phase emerges at intermediate field strengths, below the polarized phase. However, since material realizations of Kitaev magnetism invariably display competing exchange interactions, the stability of these exotic phases with respect to additional couplings is a key issue. Here, we report a 24-site exact diagonalization study of the Heisenberg-Kitaev model in a magnetic field applied in the [001] and [111] directions. By mapping the full phase diagram of the model and contrasting the results to recent nonlinear spin-wave calculations, we show that both methods agree well, thus establishing that quantum corrections substantially modify the classical phase diagram. Furthermore, we find that, in a [111] field, the intermediate-field spin-disordered phase is remarkably stable to Heisenberg interactions and may potentially end in a novel quantum tricritical point.
Abstract The S = 1/2 Kitaev honeycomb model has attracted significant attention as an exactly solvable example with a quantum spin liquid ground state. In an properly oriented external magnetic field, the system exhibits chiral Majorana edge modes with an associated quantized thermal Hall conductance, and a distinct spin-disordered phase emerges at intermediate field strengths, below the polarized phase. However, since material realizations of Kitaev magnetism invariably display competing exchange interactions, the stability of these exotic phases with respect to additional couplings is a key issue. Here, we report a 24-site exact diagonalization study of the Heisenberg-Kitaev model in a magnetic field applied in the [001] and [111] directions. By mapping the full phase diagram of the model and contrasting the results to recent nonlinear spin-wave calculations, we show that both methods agree well, thus establishing that quantum corrections substantially modify the classical phase diagram. Furthermore, we find that, in a [111] field, the intermediate-field spin-disordered phase is remarkably stable to Heisenberg interactions and may potentially end in a novel quantum tricritical point.
The Kitaev spin liquid, stabilized as the ground state of the Kitaev honeycomb model, is a paradigmatic example of a topological Z2 quantum spin liquid. The fate of the Kitaev spin liquid in presence of an external magnetic field is at present, a subject of intense scrutiny due to recent experimental signatures pointing to a Z2 topological phase in certain materials, as well as theoretical studies predicting the emergence of a quantum spin liquid phase of debated nature. In this work, we employ hierarchical mean-field theory, a method based on the use of clusters preserving relevant symmetries and short-range quantum correlations, to investigate the quantum phase diagram of the antiferromagnetic Kitaev's model in a [111] magnetic field. By using clusters of 24 sites, we predict that the Kitaev spin liquid transits through two intermediate phases, characterized by emerging stripe and chiral orders, respectively, before entering the trivial partially polarized phase, differing from previous studies. We assess our results by performing exact diagonalization and computing the scaling of different observables, including the many-body Chern number and other topological quantities, thus establishing hierarchical mean-field theory as a method to study models of frustrated quantum magnetism potentially hosting topological quantum spin liquids.
The exact solution of Kitaev's spin-1/2 honeycomb spin-liquid model has sparked an intense search for Mott insulators hosting bond-dependent Kitaev interactions, of which Na2IrO3 and $\ensuremath{\alpha}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{Ru}{\mathrm{Cl}}_{3}$ are prime examples. Subsequently, it has been proposed that also spin-1 and spin-3/2 analogs of Kitaev interactions may occur in materials with strong spin-orbit coupling. As a minimal model to describe these Kitaev materials, we study the Heisenberg-Kitaev Hamiltonian in a consistent 1/S expansion, with S being the spin size. We present a comprehensive study of this model in the presence of an external magnetic field applied along two different directions, [001] and [111], for which an intricate classical phase diagram has been reported. In both settings, we employ spin-wave theory in a number of ordered phases to compute phase boundaries at the next-to-leading order in 1/S and show that quantum corrections substantially modify the classical phase diagram. More broadly, our work presents a consistent route to investigate the leading quantum corrections in spin models that break spin-rotational symmetry.
We explore the phase diagram of the Kitaev-Heisenberg model with nearest neighbor interactions on the honeycomb lattice using the exact diagonalization of finite systems combined with the cluster mean field approximation, and supplemented by the insights from analytic approaches: the linear spin-wave and second-order perturbation theories. This study confirms that by varying the balance between the Heisenberg and Kitaev term, frustrated exchange interactions stabilize in this model either one of four phases with magnetic long range order: N\'eel phase, ferromagnetic phase, and two other phases with coexisting antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic bonds, zigzag and stripy phase, or one of two distinct spin-liquid phases. Out of these latter disordered phases, the one with ferromagnetic Kitaev interactions has a substantially broader range of stability as the neighboring competing ordered phases, ferromagnetic and stripy, have very weak quantum fluctuations. Focusing on the quantum spin-liquid phases, we study spatial spin correlations and dynamic spin structure factor of the model by the exact diagonalization technique, and discuss the evolution of gapped low-energy spin response across the quantum phase transitions between the disordered spin liquid and phases with long range magnetic order.
We have studied the anti-ferromagnetic Kitaev model on a honeycomb lattice under the Zeeman field, using an extensive Majorana mean-field analysis. When the magnetic field is along a specific Cartesian axis, we find that the emergent fields exhibit direction-dependent stabilization up to a certain critical strength of the external field. For a conical magnetic field, the characteristics of the emergent intermediate state are elusive. Our mean-field analysis reveals the existence of two distinct phases in the intermediate region. First, the system enters a disordered phase, where emergent-field densities converge to random values, and the Chern number is ill-defined. The magnitude of magnetization also fluctuates and remains less than unity, indicating a strong quantum effect. In the second phase, emergent-field densities attain vanishingly small values. In this phase, the magnetization components fluctuate heavily, but the magnitude of the magnetization vectors becomes unity, indicating highly degenerate classical ground states. We perform exact diagonalization calculations that qualitatively support some of the mean-field results. We extend our study to the anisotropic limit of the Kitaev coupling parameters. When the couplings are beyond the triangular inequality, the pure Kitaev model is known to host a topologically trivial gapped quantum spin liquid. We find that, for intermediate strengths of a conical magnetic field, topology shows a reentrant behavior.
In the field of quantum magnetism, the exactly solvable Kitaev honeycomb model serves as a paradigm for the fractionalization of spin degrees of freedom and the formation of [Formula: see text] quantum spin liquids. An intense experimental search has led to the discovery of a number of spin-orbit entangled Mott insulators that realize its characteristic bond-directional interactions and, in the presence of magnetic fields, exhibit no indications of long-range order. Here, we map out the complete phase diagram of the Kitaev model in tilted magnetic fields and report the emergence of a distinct gapless quantum spin liquid at intermediate field strengths. Analyzing a number of static, dynamical, and finite temperature quantities using numerical exact diagonalization techniques, we find strong evidence that this phase exhibits gapless fermions coupled to a massless U(1) gauge field. We discuss its stability in the presence of perturbations that naturally arise in spin-orbit entangled candidate materials.
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.