New experimental strategies to explore the Kitaev interaction in honeycomb Mott insulators

Two-dimensional van der Waals honeycomb ferromagnets such as CrI₃ have attracted a lot of interest because of their potential applications in spintronics. We propose new experimental strategies to explore the bond-dependent interactions in honeycomb ferromagnets based on symmetries. These new methods can help resolve the debate on the importance of Kitaev interaction in CrI₃ from recent angle-dependent ferromagnetic resonance experiments and inelastic neutron scattering spin gap measurements. These strategies in general can be applied to other systems with similar symmetries.