ICTS faculty member Subhro Bhattacharjee and former ICTS postdoctoral fellow Adhip Agarwala’s publication (in collaboration with Johannes Knolle and Roderich Moessner) titled Gapless State of Interacting Majorana Fermions in a Strain-induced Landau Level was selected as ‘Editors’ Suggestion’ in Physical Review B. Editors' Suggestions are prominently displayed on the journal website and are chosen for their clarity as well as important and interesting work.
Majorana Fermions have been the subject of intense interest as emergent quasiparticles in condensed matter physics. According to the editors at Physical Review B, this study lies at the crossroad of diverse fields, such as quantum Hall physics, frustrated magnets, flat-band physics, and interacting Majorana fermions. The authors demonstrated a theoretical realization of a Kitaev “non-Fermi” spin liquid, where interacting Majorana fermions collectively realize a gapless state that resembles fractional quantum Hall physics at half filling. They showed how the action of strain in a Kitaev material can potentially generate such a phase, in which pair hopping of fermions, constrained by symmetries, dominates the ground-state physics and the excitations.
The research was supported by SERB-DST, Govt. of India and Max Planck partner group grant at ICTS.