Dissipationless spin current generation in a Kitaev chiral spin liquid

alpha-RuCl3 is a promising candidate material for the Kitaev spin liquid state where the half quantization of the thermal Hall effect, suggesting a topological character, has been observed. Here we propose a more direct signature of a chiral Majorana edge mode which emerges in a universal scaling of the Drude weight of the edge spin Seebeck effect in the Kitaev model. Moreover, the absence of backscatterings in the chiral edge mode results in the generation of a dissipationless spin current in spite of an extremely short spin correlation length close to a lattice constant in the bulk. This result is not only experimentally observable, but also opens a way towards spintronics application of Kitaev materials.

Automated summary

Researchers propose a thermal probe method based on the Kitaev model to directly detect the chiral Majorana edge mode. This method is not only experimentally observable, but also opens up possibilities for spintronics application of Kitaev materials.