Landau Levels of Majorana Fermions in a Spin Liquid

Stephan Rachel, Lars Fritz, and Matthias Vojta
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 167201 – Published 21 April 2016
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Abstract

Majorana fermions, originally proposed as elementary particles acting as their own antiparticles, can be realized in condensed-matter systems as emergent quasiparticles, a situation often accompanied by topological order. Here we propose a physical system which realizes Landau levels—highly degenerate single-particle states usually resulting from an orbital magnetic field acting on charged particles—for Majorana fermions. This is achieved in a variant of a quantum spin system due to Kitaev which is distorted by triaxial strain. This strained Kitaev model displays a spin-liquid phase with charge-neutral Majorana-fermion excitations whose spectrum corresponds to that of Landau levels, here arising from a tailored pseudomagnetic field. We show that measuring the dynamic spin susceptibility reveals the Landau-level structure by a remarkable mechanism of probe-induced bound-state formation.

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  • Received 2 November 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.167201

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Stephan Rachel1, Lars Fritz2, and Matthias Vojta1

  • 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
  • 2Institute for Theoretical Physics and Center for Extreme Matter and Emergent Phenomena, Utrecht University, Leuvenlaan 4, 3584 CE Utrecht, The Netherlands

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Issue

Vol. 116, Iss. 16 — 22 April 2016

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