We investigate the ground states of spin-S Kitaev ladders using exact analytical solutions (for S=1/2), perturbation theory, and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. We find an even-odd effect: in the case of half-integer S, we find phases with spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) and symmetry-protected topological (SPT) order; for integer S, we find SSB and trivial paramagnetic phases. We also study the transitions between the various phases; notably, for half-integer S we find a transition between two distinct SPT orders, and for integer S we find unnecessary first order phase transitions within a trivial phase
@article{arxiv.2211.02754,
title = {Phase diagrams of spin-$S$ Kitaev ladders},
author = {Yushao Chen and Yin-Chen He and Aaron Szasz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.02754},
year = {2023}
}