Thermal transport in a one-dimensional Z2 spin liquid

We study the dynamical thermal conductivity of the Kitaev spin model on a two-leg ladder. In contrast to the majority of conventional one-dimensional spin systems, we show the ladder to exhibit no ballistic channel and a zero-frequency pseudogap. This is a direct consequence of the fractionalization...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. B 2017-07, Vol.96 (4)
Main Authors: Metavitsiadis, Alexandros, Brenig, Wolfram
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Heat treatment
Spin liquid
Thermal conductivity
Variations
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We study the dynamical thermal conductivity of the Kitaev spin model on a two-leg ladder. In contrast to the majority of conventional one-dimensional spin systems, we show the ladder to exhibit no ballistic channel and a zero-frequency pseudogap. This is a direct consequence of the fractionalization of spins into mobile Majorana matter and a static Z2 gauge field, which acts as an emergent thermally activated disorder. Our finding rests on complementary calculations of the current correlation function, comprising a phenomenological mean-field treatment of thermal gauge fluctuations, a complete summation over all gauge sectors, as well as exact diagonalization of the original spin model. The results will also be contrasted against the conductivity discarding gauge fluctuations.
ISSN:2469-9950
2469-9969
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.96.041115