Confinement-deconfinement transition and spin correlations in a generalized Kitaev model

Mandal, S and Bhattacharjee, Subhro and Sengupta, K and Shankar, R and Baskaran, G (2011) Confinement-deconfinement transition and spin correlations in a generalized Kitaev model. In: Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 84 (15).

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Abstract

We present a spin model, namely, the Kitaev model augmented by a loop term and perturbed by an Ising Hamiltonian, and show that it exhibits both confinement-deconfinement transitions from spin liquid to antiferromagnetic/spin-chain/ferromagnetic phases and topological quantum phase transitions between gapped and gapless spin-liquid phases. We develop a fermionic resonating-valence-bonds (RVB) mean-field theory to chart out the phase diagram of the model and estimate the stability of its spin-liquid phases, which might be relevant for attempts to realize the model in optical lattices and other spin systems. We present an analytical mean-field theory to study the confinement-deconfinement transition for large coefficient of the loop term and show that this transition is first order within such mean-field analysis in this limit. We also conjecture that in some other regimes, the confinement-deconfinement transitions in the model, predicted to be first order within the mean-field theory, may become second order via a defect condensation mechanism. Finally, we present a general classification of the perturbations to the Kitaev model on the basis of their effect on it's spin correlation functions and derive a necessary and sufficient condition, within the regime of validity of perturbation theory, for the spin correlators to exhibit a long-ranged power-law behavior in the presence of such perturbations. Our results reproduce those of Tikhonov et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 067203 (2011)] as a special case.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
Publisher:	The American Physical Society
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to The American Physical Society.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	17 Nov 2011 09:01
Last Modified:	17 Nov 2011 09:01
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/42067

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