Field-induced QCD_{3}-Chern-Simons quantum criticalities in Kitaev materials
Name
PhysRevResearch.2.013072.pdf
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769.25 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9955733b2e70ec5ced559d2c92c4bf82
Author(s)
Zou, Liujun
Date Issued
January 23, 2020
Journal
Physical review research
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Zou, Liujun and Yin-Chen He. “Field-induced QCD_{3}-Chern-Simons quantum criticalities in Kitaev materials.” Physical review research 2 (2020): © 2020 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Kitaev materials are promising for realizing exotic quantum spin liquid phases, such as a non-Abelian chiral spin liquid. Motivated by recent experiments in these materials, we theoretically study the novel field-induced quantum phase transitions from the non-Abelian chiral spin liquid to the symmetry-broken zigzag phase and to the trivial polarized state. Utilizing the recently developed dualities of gauge theories, we find these transitions can be described by critical bosons or gapless fermions coupled to emergent non-Abelian gauge fields, and the critical theories are of the type of a QCD_{3}-Chern-Simons theory. We propose that all these exotic quantum phase transitions can potentially be direct and continuous in Kitaev materials, and we present sound evidence for this proposal. Therefore, besides being systems with intriguing quantum magnetism, Kitaev materials may also serve as table-top experimental platforms to study the interesting dynamics of emergent strongly interacting quarks and gluons in 2+1 dimensions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.013072
