Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering Response of the Kitaev Honeycomb Model.
We calculate the resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) response of the Kitaev honeycomb model, an exactly solvable quantum-spin-liquid model with fractionalized Majorana and flux excitations. We find that the fundamental RIXS channels, the spin-conserving (SC) and the non-spin-conserving (NSC) ones, do not interfere and give completely different responses. SC RIXS picks up exclusively the Majorana sector with a pronounced momentum dispersion, whereas NSC RIXS also creates immobile fluxes, thereby rendering the response only weakly momentum dependent, as in the spin structure factor measured by inelastic neutron scattering. RIXS can, therefore, pick up the fractionalized excitations of the Kitaev spin liquid separately, making it a sensitive probe to detect spin-liquid character in potential material incarnations of the Kitaev honeycomb model.
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Gábor B
GB
Halász
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55116, USA.
Natalia B
NB
Perkins
IFW Dresden, Helmholtzstrasse 20, 01069 Dresden, Germany.|Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Jeroen
J
van den Brink