Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

The DPG Spring Meeting in Dresden had to be cancelled! Read more ...

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 22: Frustrated Magnets - Spin Liquids 1 (joint session TT/MA)

MA 22.11: Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 12:15–12:30, HSZ 304

Phonon renormalization in the Kitaev quantum spin liquid — •Alexandros Metavitsiadis and Wolfram Brenig — Institute for Theoretical Physics, Technical University Braunschweig, D-38106 Braunschweig, Germany

We present the self-energy of phonons, magnetoelastically coupled to the two-dimensional Kitaev spin-model on the honeycomb lattice. Fractionalization of magnetic moments into mobile Majorana matter and a static Z₂ gauge field lead to a continuum of relaxation processes comprising two channels. Thermal flux excitations, which act as an emergent disorder, strongly affect the phonon renormalization. Above the flux proliferation temperature, the dispersion of a narrow quasiparticle-hole channel is suppressed in favor of broad and only weakly momentum dependent features, covering large spectral ranges. Our analysis is based on complementary calculations in the low-temperature homogeneous gauge and a mean-field treatment of thermal gauge fluctuations, valid at intermediate and high temperatures.