Thermal anyon interferometry in phonon-coupled Kitaev spin liquids

TL;DR

This paper proposes innovative device architectures for precise thermal transport measurements in phonon-coupled Kitaev spin liquids, enabling quantized Hall conductance detection, non-Abelian anyon identification, and single-anyon interferometry.

Contribution

It introduces mesoscopic-macroscopic devices that improve thermal-transport probing of non-Abelian spin liquids with minimal phonon interference, advancing experimental detection methods.

Findings

Accurate measurement of quantized thermal Hall conductivity.

Identification of non-Abelian Ising anyons via temperature dependence.

Single-anyon detection through heat-based interferometry.

Abstract

Recent theoretical studies inspired by experiments on the Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ 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 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.