Thermodynamics of Chiral Spin Liquids with Abelian and Non-Abelian Anyons

TL;DR

This study explores the thermodynamic behavior of chiral spin liquids in a Kitaev model variant, revealing phase transitions, the nature of anyonic excitations, and entropy signatures that distinguish trivial and nontrivial topological phases.

Contribution

It demonstrates the connection between phase transition types and the transition from Abelian to non-Abelian anyons using quantum Monte Carlo simulations and topological measurements.

Findings

Finite-temperature phase transition with symmetry breaking.

Transition from continuous to discontinuous phase transition with changing parameters.

Distinct entropy release patterns indicating hierarchical fractionalization.

Abstract

Thermodynamic properties of chiral spin liquids are investigated for a variant of the Kitaev model defined on a decorated honeycomb lattice. Using the quantum Monte Carlo simulation, we find that the model exhibits a finite-temperature phase transition associated with the time reversal symmetry breaking, in both topologically trivial and nontrivial regions. While changing the exchange constants, the phase transition changes from continuous to discontinuous one, apparently correlated with the change in the excitations from Abelian to non-Abelian anyons. We show this coincidence by computing the topological quantities: the Chern number and the thermal Hall conductivity. In addition, we find, as a diagnostic of the chiral spin liquids, successive crossovers with multi-stage entropy release above the critical temperature, which indicates that the hierarchical fractionalization of a quantum spin occurs differently between the two regions.