SFB 1238 | January 15, 14:30

Thermal transport in Kitaev magnets

Wolfram Brenig

Mott insulators with strong spin orbit coupling have become a playground to search for exotic quantum phases, spin liquids and emergent Majorana fermions. In this context I will present some of our results for the dynamics of Kitaev (-Heisenberg) models, focusing on magnetic thermal transport, but also on phonon relaxation. Fractionalization of magnetic moments into mobile Majorana matter and a static Z2 gauge field in the pure Kitaev limit, lead to characteristic spectral continua. These continua are strongly affected by thermal flux excitations which act as an emergent disorder. I will discuss the consequences, using results from several approaches comprising a mean-field theory, complete summation over all gauge sectors, exact diagonalization, and quantum typicality calculations.


TU Braunschweig
Seminar Room of the Institute of Physics II
Contact: P. van Loosdrecht