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Observation of two types of fractional excitation in the Kitaev honeycomb magnet

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 786–790 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Quantum spin liquid is a disordered but highly entangled magnetic state with fractional spin excitations1. The ground state of an exactly solved Kitaev honeycomb model is perhaps its clearest example2. Under a magnetic field, a spin flip in this model fractionalizes into two types of anyon, a quasiparticle with more complex exchange statistics than standard fermions or bosons: a pair of gauge fluxes and a Majorana fermion2,3. Here, we demonstrate this kind of fractionalization in the Kitaev paramagnetic state of the honeycomb magnet α-RuCl3. The spin excitation gap determined by nuclear magnetic resonance consists of the predicted Majorana fermion contribution following the cube of the applied magnetic field2,4,5, and a finite zero-field contribution matching the predicted size of the gauge flux gap2,6. The observed fractionalization into gapped anyons survives in a broad range of temperatures and magnetic fields, which establishes α-RuCl3 as a unique platform for future investigations of anyons.

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Fig. 1: Structure of α-RuCl3 and the key signature of anyons.
Fig. 2: Signature of the Kitaev spin excitations.
Fig. 3: Determination of the spin excitation gap.

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Acknowledgements

M.K. acknowledges discussions with M. Horvatić and C. Berthier. The work was partly supported by the Slovenian ARRS program No. P1-0125 and project No. PR-07587. A.B. and Ch.R. acknowledge financial support by the Marie Curie FP7 COFUND PSI Fellowship programme, the Swiss National Science Foundation (Sinergia Network Mott Physics Beyond the Heisenberg Model), and the ERC Grant Hyper Quantum Criticality (HyperQC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Nejc Janša, Andrej Zorko, Matjaž Gomilšek, Matej Pregelj & Martin Klanjšek

  2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Karl W. Krämer & Daniel Biner

  3. Laboratory for Neutron Scattering and Imaging, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland

    Alun Biffin & Christian Rüegg

  4. Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Christian Rüegg

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  1. Nejc Janša
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Contributions

M.K. conceived, designed and led the project. N.J. and M.K. performed the NMR experiments and analysed the data. K.W.K. and D.B. grew the samples. A.B. performed the magnetic susceptibility measurements. All the authors discussed the results. M.K. wrote the paper with feedback from all the authors.

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Correspondence to Martin Klanjšek.

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Supplementary Figures 1–9, Supplementary References

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Janša, N., Zorko, A., Gomilšek, M. et al. Observation of two types of fractional excitation in the Kitaev honeycomb magnet. Nature Phys 14, 786–790 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0129-5

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