English

Finite-temperature phase diagram of the Heisenberg-Kitaev model

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2011-09-26 v1

Abstract

We discuss the finite-temperature phase diagram of the Heisenberg-Kitaev model on the hexagonal lattice, which has been suggested to describe the spin-orbital exchange of the effective spin-1/2 momenta in the Mott insulating Iridate Na2IrO3. At zero-temperature this model exhibits magnetically ordered states well beyond the isotropic Heisenberg limit as well as an extended gapless spin liquid phase around the highly anisotropic Kitaev limit. Using a pseudofermion functional renormalization group (RG) approach, we extract both the Curie-Weiss scale and the critical ordering scale (for the magnetically ordered states) from the RG flow of the magnetic susceptibility. The Curie-Weiss scale switches sign -- indicating a transition of the dominant exchange from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic -- deep in the magnetically ordered regime. For the latter we find no significant frustration, i.e. a substantial suppression of the ordering scale with regard to the Curie-Weiss scale. We discuss our results in light of recent experimental susceptibility measurements for Na2IrO3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.2005,
  title  = {Finite-temperature phase diagram of the Heisenberg-Kitaev model},
  author = {Johannes Reuther and Ronny Thomale and Simon Trebst},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.2005},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

4+e pages, 5 figures