Abstract Finding the Kitaev spin liquid in candidate materials involves understanding the entire phase diagram, including other allowed interactions. One of these interactions, called the Gamma (Γ) interaction, causes magnetic frustration and its interplay with the Kitaev (K) interaction is crucial to comprehend Kitaev materials. Due to the complexity of the combined KΓ model, quasi-one-dimensional models have been investigated. While several disordered phases are found in the 2-leg ladder, the nature of the phases are yet to be determined. Here we focus on the disordered phase near the antiferromagnetic Γ limit (denoted by AΓ phase) next to the ferromagnetic Kitaev phase. We report a distinct non-local string order parameter characterizing the AΓ phase, different from the string order parameter in the Kitaev phase. This string order parameter becomes evident only after two unitary transformation, referred to as a twice hidden string order parameter. The related entanglement spectrum, edge states, magnetic field responses, and the symmetry protecting the phase are presented, and its relevance to the two-dimensional Kitaev materials is discussed. Two newly identified disordered phases in the phase diagram of KΓ ladder is also reported.
We study the spin-
21 Kitaev-Heisenberg (KJ) model in a two-leg ladder. Without a Heisenberg interaction, the Kitaev phase in the ladder model has Majorana fermions with local
Z2 gauge fields, and is usually described as a disordered phase without any order parameter. Here we identify a long-range nonlocal string order parameter (SOP) in the Kitaev phase which survives with a finite Heisenberg interaction. The SOP is obtained by relating the Kitaev ladder, through a nonlocal unitary transformation, to a one-dimensional
XY chain with an Ising coupling to a dangling spin at every site. This differentiates the Kitaev phases from other nearby phases including a rung singlet. Two phases with nonzero SOP corresponding to ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kitaev interactions are identified. The full phase diagram of the KJ ladder is determined using exact diagonalization and density matrix renormalization group methods, which shows a striking similarity to the KJ model on a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice.
Abstract The spin-orbit generated Γ interaction is known to induce strong frustration and to be significant in realistic models of materials. To gain an understanding of the possible phases that can arise from this interaction, it is of considerable interest to focus on a limited part of parameter space in a quasi one-dimensional model where high precision numerical results can be obtained. Here we study the Heisenberg–Gamma ( <?CDATA
JΓ?> J Γ ) ladder, determining the complete zero temperature phase diagram by analyzing the entanglement spectrum (ES) and energy susceptibility. A total of 11 different phases can be identified, among them the well known rung-singlet (RS) phase and 5 other phases, FM, FM-Z, FM-XY, AF and AF-Z, with conventional long-range magnetic order. The 3 ferromagnetic phases, FM, FM-Z and FM-XY simultaneously have non-zero scalar chirality. Two other phases, the antiferromagnetic Gamma (AΓ) and ferromagnetic Gamma (FΓ) phases, have previously been observed in the Kitaev–Gamma ladder, demonstrating that the AΓ-phase is a symmetry protected topological phase (SPT) protected by TR <?CDATA
×Rb?> × R b symmetry, the product of time-reversal (TR) and π rotation around the b-axis ( <?CDATA
Rb?> R b ), while the FΓ-phase is related to the RS phase through a local unitary transformation. The 3 remaining phases, ϒ, Ω and δ show no conventional order, a doubling of the ES and for the ϒ and Ω-phases a gap is clearly present. The δ-phase has a significantly smaller gap and displays incommensurate correlations, with a peak in the static structure factor, S(k) continuously shifting from <?CDATA
k/π=2/3?> k / π = 2 / 3 to <?CDATA
k=π?> k = π . In the Ω-phase we find pronounced edge-states consistent with a SPT phase protected by the same TR <?CDATA
×Rb?> × R b symmetry as the AΓ-phase. The precise nature of the ϒ and δ-phases is less clear.
Abstract Aligning with the ongoing search for quantum spin liquids (QSLs), identifying QSLs in Kitaev magnets has attracted significant research interest during the past decade. Nevertheless, it remains a significant challenge. One of the major difficulties is that Kitaev QSL is typically fragile to competing interactions such as off-diagonal exchanges, which are ubiquitous in real materials owing to spin-orbit coupling and crystal-field effects. This, in turn, generates many intriguing field-induced novel phases and the thermal Hall effect. In this review, we focus on the interplay between the Kitaev interaction and off-diagonal Γ and Γ′ exchange from a numerical perspective. The review discusses certain representative exotic phases such as Γ spin liquid, nematic ferromagnet, spin-flop phase, and distinct chiral spin states with spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. It also presents quantum phase diagrams of anisotropic Kitaev-Γ chains that exhibit kaleidoscopy for both ordered and disordered phases.
A central question on Kitaev materials is the effects of additional couplings on the Kitaev model, which is proposed to be a candidate for realizing topological quantum computations.However, two spatial dimensions typically suffer the difficulty of lacking controllable approaches.In this work, using a combination of powerful analytical and numerical methods available in one dimension, we perform a comprehensive study on the phase diagram of a one-dimensional version of the spin-1/2 Kitaev-Heisenberg-Gamma model in its full parameter space.A strikingly rich phase diagram is found with nine distinct phases, including four Luttinger liquid phases, a ferromagnetic phase, a Néel ordered phase, an ordered phase of distorted-spiral spin alignments, and two ordered phases, which both break a D 3 symmetry albeit in different ways, where D 3 is the dihedral group of order six.Our work paves the way for studying one-dimensional Kitaev materials and may provide hints to the physics in higher-dimensional situations.
Abstract We study the spin-1/2 Kitaev chain with additional XX and symmetric off-diagonal Gamma interactions. By combining the Jordan–Wigner transformation with density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) numerical simulations, we obtain the exact solution of the model and map out the phase diagram containing six distinct phases. The four gapped phases display ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic magnetic orders along the (1,1,0)- and (1,-1,0)-spin directions, whereas in the gapless phases, the low-energy spectrum consists of two branches of helical Majorana fermions with unequal velocities. The transition lines separating different phases include deconfined quantum critical lines with dynamical critical exponent z = 1 and quadratic critical lines with z = 2. Our work reveals the rich interplay among symmetry, magnetic order, and quantum criticality in the Kitaev–XX–Gamma chain.
Two-leg spin-
1/2 ladders with anisotropy and two different dimerization patterns are analyzed at zero temperature. This model is equivalent to a modulated interacting (Kitaev) ladder. The Hartree-Fock mean-field approximation reduces the model to a sum of two quadratic effective Majorana Hamiltonians, which are dual to two quantum transverse XY chains. The mapping between the effective Hamiltonian of the ladder and a pair of chains considerably simplifies calculations of the order parameters and analysis of the hidden symmetry breaking. The ground-state phase diagram of the staggered ladder contains nine phases, four of them are conventional antiferromagnets, while the other five possess nonlocal brane orders. Using the dualities and the newly found exact results for the local and string order parameters of the transverse XY chains, we were able to find analytically all the magnetizations and the brane order parameters for the staggered case, as functions of the renormalized couplings of the effective Hamiltonian. The columnar ladder has three ground-state phases and does not possess magnetic long-ranged order. The brane order parameters for these three phases are calculated numerically from the Toeplitz determinants. All brane-ordered phases are spin liquids with identified distinct order parameters, winding numbers, and sets of the Majorana edge modes. Disorder lines and the special points of disentanglement are found in both dimerization patterns. We expect this study to motivate the search for the real spin-Peierls anisotropic ladder compounds which manifest predicted properties.