Time-domain anyon interferometry in Kitaev honeycomb spin liquids and beyond

TL;DR

This paper proposes a time-domain interferometry method using ancillary spins to detect and characterize non-Abelian anyons and edge states in Kitaev spin liquids, with potential applications across various topological phases.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-domain probing scheme utilizing ancillary spins to reveal edge and quasiparticle properties in non-Abelian spin liquids, extending quantum Hall interferometry techniques.

Findings

Ancillary spin dynamics can measure edge-state velocity.

The scheme detects individual non-Abelian anyons.

Potential applications in solid-state and cold-atom systems.

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on the Kitaev honeycomb magnet $\alpha\text{-RuCl}_3$, we introduce time-domain probes of the edge and quasiparticle content of non-Abelian spin liquids. Our scheme exploits ancillary quantum spins that communicate via time-dependent tunneling of energy into and out of the spin liquid's chiral Majorana edge state. We show that the ancillary-spin dynamics reveals the edge-state velocity and, in suitable geometries, detects individual non-Abelian anyons and emergent fermions via a time-domain counterpart of quantum-Hall anyon interferometry. We anticipate applications to a wide variety of topological phases in solid-state and cold-atoms settings.