Thermal fractionalization of quantum spins in a Kitaev model: Temperature-linear specific heat and coherent transport of Majorana fermions

Finite-temperature (T) properties of a Kitaev model defined on a honeycomb lattice are investigated by a quantum Monte Carlo simulation, from the viewpoint of fractionalization of quantum S = 1/2 spins into two types of Majorana fermions, itinerant and localized. In this system, the entropy is released successively at two well-separated T scales, as a clear indication of the thermal fractionalization. We show that the high-T crossover, which is driven by itinerant Majorana fermions, is closely related with the development of nearest-neighbor spin correlations. On the other hand, the low-T crossover originates in thermal fluctuations of fluxes composed of localized Majorana fermions, by which the spectrum of itinerant Majorana fermions is significantly disturbed. As a consequence, in the intermediate-T range between the two crossovers, the system exhibits T-linear behavior in the specific heat and coherent transport of Majorana fermions, which are unexpected for the Dirac semimetallic spectrum in the low-T limit. We also show that the flux fluctuations tend to open an energy gap in the Majorana spectrum near the gapless-gapped phase boundary. Our results indicate that the fractionalization is experimentally observable in the specific heat, spin correlations, and transport properties.