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An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid

Topological insulator phases of non-interacting particles have been generalized from periodic crystals to amorphous lattices, which raises the question whether topologically ordered quantum many-body phases may similarly exist in amorphous systems? Here we construct a soluble chiral amorphous quantu...

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Autores principales: Cassella, G., d’Ornellas, P., Hodson, T., Natori, W. M. H., Knolle, J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10589230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37863892
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42105-9
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author Cassella, G.
d’Ornellas, P.
Hodson, T.
Natori, W. M. H.
Knolle, J.
author_facet Cassella, G.
d’Ornellas, P.
Hodson, T.
Natori, W. M. H.
Knolle, J.
author_sort Cassella, G.
collection PubMed
description Topological insulator phases of non-interacting particles have been generalized from periodic crystals to amorphous lattices, which raises the question whether topologically ordered quantum many-body phases may similarly exist in amorphous systems? Here we construct a soluble chiral amorphous quantum spin liquid by extending the Kitaev honeycomb model to random lattices with fixed coordination number three. The model retains its exact solubility but the presence of plaquettes with an odd number of sides leads to a spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry. We unearth a rich phase diagram displaying Abelian as well as a non-Abelian quantum spin liquid phases with a remarkably simple ground state flux pattern. Furthermore, we show that the system undergoes a finite-temperature phase transition to a conducting thermal metal state and discuss possible experimental realisations.
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spelling pubmed-105892302023-10-22 An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid Cassella, G. d’Ornellas, P. Hodson, T. Natori, W. M. H. Knolle, J. Nat Commun Article Topological insulator phases of non-interacting particles have been generalized from periodic crystals to amorphous lattices, which raises the question whether topologically ordered quantum many-body phases may similarly exist in amorphous systems? Here we construct a soluble chiral amorphous quantum spin liquid by extending the Kitaev honeycomb model to random lattices with fixed coordination number three. The model retains its exact solubility but the presence of plaquettes with an odd number of sides leads to a spontaneous breaking of time reversal symmetry. We unearth a rich phase diagram displaying Abelian as well as a non-Abelian quantum spin liquid phases with a remarkably simple ground state flux pattern. Furthermore, we show that the system undergoes a finite-temperature phase transition to a conducting thermal metal state and discuss possible experimental realisations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10589230/ /pubmed/37863892 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42105-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Cassella, G.
d’Ornellas, P.
Hodson, T.
Natori, W. M. H.
Knolle, J.
An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
title An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
title_full An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
title_fullStr An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
title_full_unstemmed An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
title_short An exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
title_sort exact chiral amorphous spin liquid
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10589230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37863892
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42105-9
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