English

Tuning topological orders by a conical magnetic field in the Kitaev model

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2020-10-28 v1 Superconductivity

Abstract

We show that a conical magnetic field H=(1,1,1)H{\bf H}=(1,1,1)H can be used to tune the topological order and hence anyon excitations of the Z2\mathrm{Z_2} quantum spin liquid in the isotropic antiferromagnetic Kitaev model. A novel topological order, featured with Chern number C=4C=4 and Abelian anyon excitations, is induced in a narrow range of intermediate fields Hc1HHc2H_{c1}\leq H\leq H_{c2}. On the other hand, the C=1C=1 Ising-topological order with non-Abelian anyon excitations, is previously known to be present at small fields, and interestingly, is found here to survive up to Hc1H_{c1}, and revive above Hc2H_{c2}, until the system becomes trivial above a higher field Hc3H_{c3}. The results are obtained by devoloping and applying a Z2\mathrm{Z_2} mean field theory, that works at zero as well as finite fields, and the associated variational quantum Monte Carlo.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1903.01279,
  title  = {Tuning topological orders by a conical magnetic field in the Kitaev model},
  author = {Ming-Hong Jiang and Shuang Liang and Wei Chen and Yang Qi and Jian-Xin Li and Qiang-Hua Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.01279},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 color figures