Generation of chirality and orbital magnetization by Stone-Wales-type lattice defects in the Kitaev spin liquid
Abstract
In this work we extend our study of the effect of certain crystallographic defects on the spin-1/2 Kitaev honeycomb spin liquid (arXiv:2511.19409), focusing on its gapless phase and contrasting with the gapped phase. We identify a Stone-Wales (SW) local defect consisting of a 90$^\circ$ bond rotation that preserves Kitaev bond labels for edge-sharing octahedra and thereby enables exact solvability. These SW-type defects involve odd-sided plaquettes with $\pm π/2$ fluxes, but can be created locally. An isolated defect hosts a time-reversal pair of ground-state flux configurations with large net chirality. Certain excitations are also chiral. The chirality manifests in Majorana local Chern marker and in scalar spin chirality, producing electronic orbital magnetization. T-matrix analysis and numerics at finite defect density $n_d$ show that defect chiralities generate a topological gap of $11 n_d$ protecting a Chern number $C=\pm 1$. Emergent ferromagnetic long range Ising interactions $r^{-γ}$ with $2
Fields of Study & Subjects
Advanced Condensed Matter Physics
Topological Materials and Phenomena
Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Physical review. B./Physical review. B
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 22
- Publication date
- 20 April 2026
- Language
- EN