Kondo screening in a Majorana metal.
Suheon LeeY S ChoiS-H DoW LeeC H LeeM LeeM VojtaChennan WangHubertus LuetkensZurab GuguchiaKwang-Yong ChoiPublished in: Nature communications (2023)
Kondo impurities provide a nontrivial probe to unravel the character of the excitations of a quantum spin liquid. In the S = 1/2 Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice, Kondo impurities embedded in the spin-liquid host can be screened by itinerant Majorana fermions via gauge-flux binding. Here, we report experimental signatures of metallic-like Kondo screening at intermediate temperatures in the Kitaev honeycomb material α-RuCl 3 with dilute Cr 3+ (S = 3/2) impurities. The static magnetic susceptibility, the muon Knight shift, and the muon spin-relaxation rate all feature logarithmic divergences, a hallmark of a metallic Kondo effect. Concurrently, the linear coefficient of the magnetic specific heat is large in the same temperature regime, indicating the presence of a host Majorana metal. This observation opens new avenues for exploring uncharted Kondo physics in insulating quantum magnets.
Keyphrases
- single molecule
- room temperature
- density functional theory
- molecular dynamics
- ionic liquid
- machine learning
- molecularly imprinted
- transition metal
- deep learning
- gene expression
- magnetic resonance
- computed tomography
- mass spectrometry
- ultrasound guided
- energy transfer
- quantum dots
- neural network
- liquid chromatography