Computational discovery of quantum spin liquids

The interplay of spin-orbit coupling and electronic correlations can give rise to a highly entangled phase of matter, known as quantum spin liquid (QSL), in which spins remain disordered down to lowest temperatures. QSLs are predicted to host charge-neutral (Majorana) excitations stemming from the fractionalisation of quantum spins, and thus can be key to unlock the power of topological quantum computing. QSLs are realised in Kitaev materials with bond-directional Ising-type interactions and admit topologically distinct phases and gauge structures. Despite the encouraging experimental progress with so-called proximity spin liquids (Nasu et al, Nat. Phys. 12, 2016), including the observation of field-induced half-quantized thermal Hall conductance (Kasahara et al, Nature 559, 2018), the precise topological order in QSL candidates remains unclear. This project aims to develop efficient many-body techniques to identify candidate QSL phases in two dimensions and unravel their topological order.