title: The vicinity of hyper-honeycomb β-Li2IrO3 to a three-dimensional Kitaev spin liquid state.
abstract: Due to the combination of a substantial spin-orbit coupling and correlation effects, iridium oxides hold a prominent place in the search for novel quantum states of matter, including, e.g., Kitaev spin liquids and topological Weyl states. We establish the promise of the very recently synthesized hyper-honeycomb iridate β-Li2IrO3 in this regard. A detailed theoretical analysis reveals the presence of large ferromagnetic first-neighbor Kitaev interactions, while a second-neighbor antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange drives the ground state from ferro to zigzag order via a three-dimensional Kitaev spin liquid and an incommensurate phase. Experiment puts the system in the latter regime but the Kitaev spin liquid is very close and reachable by a slight modification of the ratio between the second- and first-neighbor couplings, for instance via strain.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Vamshi M
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Katukuri
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Ravi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yadav
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Liviu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hozoi
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.|Institute for Theoretical Physics, Technische Universität Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 10, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishimoto
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstr. 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.|Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Jeroen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van den Brink