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Thermal anyon interferometry in phonon-coupled Kitaev spin liquids

ORAL

Abstract

Recent theoretical studies inspired by experiments on the Kitaev magnet α-RuCl3 highlight the nontrivial impact of phonons on the thermal Hall conductivity of chiral topological phases. Here we introduce mixed mesoscopic-macroscopic devices that allow refined thermal-transport probes of non-Abelian spin liquids with Ising topological order. These devices feature a quantum-coherent mesoscopic region with quantized or negligible phonon conductance, flanked by macroscopic lobes that facilitate efficient thermalization between chiral Majorana edge modes and bulk phonons. We show that our devices enable (i) accurate determination of the quantized thermal Hall conductivity, (ii) identification of non-Abelian Ising anyons via the temperature dependence of the thermal conductance, and most interestingly (iii) single-anyon detection through heat-based anyon interferometry. Analogous results apply broadly to phonon-coupled chiral topological orders.

Publication: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.05869

Presenters

  • Kai Klocke

    University of California, Berkeley

Authors

  • Kai Klocke

    University of California, Berkeley

  • Joel E Moore

    University of California, Berkeley

  • Jason F Alicea

    Caltech

  • Gabor Halasz

    Oak Ridge National Lab