Towards Kitaev spin liquid in 3d transition metal compounds

This paper reviews the current progress on searching the Kitaev spin liquid state in 3[Formula: see text] electron systems. Honeycomb cobaltates were recently proposed as promising candidates to realize the Kitaev spin liquid state, due to the more localized wavefunctions of [Formula: see text] ions compared with that of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] ions, and also the easy tunability of the exchange Hamiltonian in favor of Kitaev interaction. Several key parameters that have large impacts on the exchange constants, such as the charge-transfer gap and the trigonal crystal field, are identified and discussed. Specifically, tuning crystal field effect by means of strain or pressure is emphasized as an efficient phase control method driving the magnetically ordered cobaltates into the spin liquid state. Experimental results suggesting the existence of strong Kitaev interactions in layered honeycomb cobaltates are discussed. Finally, the future research directions are briefly outlined.

A rotating quantum system without angular momentum and shape deformations

The free translational dynamics of an n-body quantum system has many applications, e.g. in molecular and nuclei systems, where it is common to classify the degrees of freedom of the system in 3 rotational and 3n - 6 shape coordinates. It is known that there exists an interaction between the shape and orientation degrees of freedom. In particular, changes of the shape could induce an orientation change. In this work, it is shown a rotating quantum system which does not deform its shape probability density and with vanishing angular momentum. The orientation change is monitored with a localized orientation wavefunction. We characterize the localized wavefunctions and study their evolution under a rigid rotor-like Hamiltonian, concluding that this kind of wavefunctions may rotate by their own.

ELECTRONIC SPECTRAL AND WAVEFUNCTION PROPERTIES OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL QUASIPERIODIC SYSTEMS: A SCALING APPROACH

We review the results of the scaling and multifractal analyses for the spectra and wave-functions of the finite-difference Schrödinger equation: [Formula: see text] Here V is a function of period 1 and ω is irrational. For the Fibonacci model, V takes only two values (it is constant except for discontinuities) and the spectrum is purely singular continuous (critical wavefunctions). When V is a smooth function, the spectrum is purely absolutely continuous (extended wavefunctions) for λ small and purely dense point (localized wavefunctions) for λ large. For an intermediate λ, the spectrum is a mixture of absolutely continuous parts and dense point parts which are separated by a finite number of mobility edges. There is no singular continuous part. (An exception is the Harper model V (x) = cos (2πx), where the spectrum is always pure and the singular continuous one appears at λ = 2.)