Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering response of the Kitaev honeycomb model

TL;DR

This paper calculates the RIXS response of the Kitaev honeycomb model, revealing how different channels probe fractionalized Majorana and flux excitations, aiding in identifying quantum spin liquids.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of RIXS channels in the Kitaev model, showing their distinct responses to fractionalized excitations, which was not previously understood.

Findings

SC-RIXS exclusively probes Majorana excitations with momentum dependence.

NSC-RIXS involves flux creation, leading to weak momentum dependence.

RIXS can distinguish fractionalized excitations in quantum spin liquids.

Abstract

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.