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Thermal Probes of Phonon-Coupled Kitaev Spin Liquids: From Accurate Extraction of Quantized Edge Transport to Anyon Interfero...

by Kai Klocke, Joel Moore, Jason Alicea, Gabor Halasz
Publication Type
Journal
Journal Name
Physical Review X
Publication Date
Page Number
011034
Volume
12
Issue
1

Recent theoretical studies inspired by experiments on the Kitaev magnet α−RuCl3 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 region with quantized or 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.