Abstract
In frustrated quantum magnetism, chiral spin liquids are a particularly intriguing subset of quantum spin liquids in which the fractionalized parton degrees of freedom form a Chern insulator. Here we study an exactly solvable spin-3/2 model which harbors not only chiral spin liquids but also spin liquids with higher-order parton band topology -- a trivial band insulator, a Chern insulator with gapless chiral edge modes, and a second-order topological insulator with gapless corner modes. With a focus on the thermodynamic precursors and thermal phase transitions associated with these distinct states, we employ numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations to reveal a number of unconventional phenomena. This includes a heightened thermal stability of the ground state phases, the emergence of a partial flux ordering of the associated $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge field, and the formation of a thermal Majorana metal regime extending over a broad temperature range.
Highlights
The emergence of topological phases from local constraints induced by competing interactions in frustrated quantum magnets has fascinated researchers for decades [1,2]
We study the thermodynamic precursors and symmetry-breaking thermal phase transitions leading to the formation of a family of spin liquid ground states which exhibit the full range of parton band topology, second-order, conventional, and trivial topology, in a generalized Kitaev model
One of the most intriguing phenomena associated with the formation of quantum spin liquids is the emergence of novel, fractionalized quantum mechanical degrees of freedom—a quasiparticle, generally referred to as a parton, coupled to the gauge field of a deconfined lattice gauge theory
Summary
The emergence of topological phases from local constraints induced by competing interactions in frustrated quantum magnets has fascinated researchers for decades [1,2]. For the case of the Kitaev honeycomb model, this perspective results in an understanding of the field-induced topological spin liquid as the formation of a Chern insulator (in the Majorana band structure) with all bands carrying a nontrivial Chern number |ν| = 1 We employ sign-problem free quantum Monte Carlo simulations in the parton basis [24] These numerically exact calculations allow us to track the fractionalization of the original spin degrees of freedom, the formation of gauge order, and the spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry upon entering the different flavors of spin liquid ground states.
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