Entanglement in 3D Kitaev spin liquids. (7th June 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Matern, S; Hermanns, M
• Is Part Of: Journal of statistical mechanics. (2018:Jun.)
• Publication Date: 2018-06-07
• Subjects: 2; Statistical mechanics -- Periodicals; Mechanics -- Statistical methods -- Periodicals; 530.1305
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-5468/aac12c
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1742-5468

Abstract

Abstract: Quantum spin liquids are highly fascinating quantum liquids in which the spin degrees of freedom fractionalize. An interesting class of spin liquids are the exactly solvable, three-dimensional Kitaev spin liquids. Their fractionalized excitations are Majonara fermions, which may exhibit a variety of topological band structures—ranging from topologically protected Weyl semi-metals over nodal semi-metals to systems with Majorana Fermi surfaces. We study the entanglement spectrum of such Kitaev spin liquids and verify that it is closely related to the topologically protected edge spectrum. Moreover, we find that in some cases the entanglement spectrum contains even more information about the topological features than the surface spectrum, and thus provides a simple and reliable tool to probe the topology of a system.