English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The Kitaev honeycomb model has attracted significant attention due to itsexactly solvable spin-liquid ground state with fractionalized Majoranaexcitations and its possible materialization in magnetic Mott insulators withstrong spin-orbit couplings. Recently, the 5d-electron compoundH$_{3}$LiIr$_{2}$O$_{6}$ has shown to be a strong candidate for Kitaev physicsconsidering the absence of any signs of a long-range ordered magnetic state. Inthis work, we demonstrate that a finite density of random vacancies in theKitaev model gives rise to a striking pileup of low-energy Majorana eigenmodesand reproduces the apparent power-law upturn in the specific heat measurementsof H$_{3}$LiIr$_{2}$O$_{6}$. Physically, the vacancies can originate fromvarious sources such as missing magnetic moments or the presence ofnon-magnetic impurities (true vacancies), or from local weak couplings ofmagnetic moments due to strong but rare bond randomness (quasivacancies). Weshow numerically that the vacancy effect is readily detectable even at lowvacancy concentrations and that it is not very sensitive neither to nature ofvacancies nor to different flux backgrounds. We also study the response of thesite-diluted Kitaev spin liquid to the three-spin interaction term, whichbreaks time-reversal symmetry and imitates an external magnetic field. Wepropose a field-induced flux-sector transition where the ground state becomesflux free for larger fields, resulting in a clear suppression of the lowtemperature specific heat. Finally, we discuss the effect of dangling Majoranafermions in the case of true vacancies and show that their coupling to anapplied magnetic field via the Zeeman interaction can also account for thescaling behavior in the high-field limit observed in H$_{3}$LiIr$_{2}$O$_{6}$.

Vacancy-induced low-energy density of states in the Kitaev spin liquid