Vison Crystals in an Extended Kitaev Model on the Honeycomb Lattice

We introduce an extension of the Kitaev honeycomb model by including four-spin interactions that preserve the local gauge structure and, hence, the integrability of the original model. The extended model has a rich phase diagram containing five distinct vison crystals, as well as a symmetric π-flux...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2019-08, Vol.123 (5), p.057201-057201, Article 057201
Main Authors: Zhang, Shang-Shun, Wang, Zhentao, Halász, Gábor B, Batista, Cristian D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer simulation
Crystal lattices
Fermi surfaces
Fermions
Phase diagrams
Spin liquid
Structure factor
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Summary:We introduce an extension of the Kitaev honeycomb model by including four-spin interactions that preserve the local gauge structure and, hence, the integrability of the original model. The extended model has a rich phase diagram containing five distinct vison crystals, as well as a symmetric π-flux spin liquid with a Fermi surface of Majorana fermions and a sequence of Lifshitz transitions. We discuss possible experimental signatures and, in particular, present finite-temperature Monte Carlo calculations of the specific heat and the static vison structure factor. We argue that our extended model emerges naturally from generic perturbations to the Kitaev honeycomb model.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.057201