Breakthrough in Kitaev Materials: control of competing interactions through pressure
Augsburg experimental physicists publish in Nature Communications
Physicists at the 伟德国际_伟德国际1946$娱乐app游戏 of Augsburg, in collaboration with colleagues from Boston (USA), have found a new generation of Kitaev material in which hydrostatic pressure can be used to create competing quantum interactions. These in turn are a prerequisite for exotic quantum states, which could perhaps form the basis for future technologies such as decoherence-immune quantum computers. The work on the investigated Kitaev material Ag3LiRh2O6 ?was published in the highly renowned journal Nature Communications. "Imagine a material in which the elementary magnetic moments, i.e. the electron spins, don’t order, even at extremely low temperatures," explains Dr Philipp Gegenwart, Professor of Experimental Physics. "Instead of solidifying in an ordered arrangement like ordinary magnets, they remain in a fluctuating and entangled quantum state. This exotic state is called quantum spin liquid." The Kitaev honeycomb model is one of the theoretical proposals as to how such a state can be brought about. This is interesting because quantum spin liquids can harbor fractionalized excitations and topological order, which may enable future applications in fault-tolerant quantum computing. However, Kitaev materials do not behave entirely according to this pattern; they exhibit additional magnetic interactions that force the spins into a regular arrangement at low temperatures. "The search for a true Kitaev spin liquid is therefore about finding - or tuning - a material in which such perturbations are eliminated or suppressed," says Dr Bin Shen, research associate and first author of the publication. Hydrostatic pressure has proven to be a powerful experimental tool to study and manipulate the delicate balance of interactions in Kitaev materials. The pressure changes the bond angles and atomic distances in the crystal lattice that interact with each other and acts like a set screw. Earlier studies of potential Kitaev materials indicated that pressure often induces structural dimerisation, which suppresses the magnetic order but also distorts the honeycomb network, pushing the system away from the desired quantum spin liquid state. ? "We asked ourselves how the magnetic order could be suppressed without destroying the honeycomb network," says Shen. The breakthrough has now been achieved with Ag3LiRh2O6. It retains its structure up to a pressure of 5 gigapascals, while the magnetic order is suppressed. "Our results show that pressure can selectively tune exchange interactions in this Kitaev material, tailoring them, so to speak," continues the physicist. "This opens up new possibilities for engineering quantum spin liquids and other exotic phases of matter.” ? Sakrikar, P., Shen, B., Poldi, E.H.T. et al. Pressure tuning of competing interactions on a honeycomb lattice. Nat Commun 16, 4712 (2025). The publication in?Nature Communications:?https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59897-7
Quantum spin liquid for fault-tolerant quantum computation
Tuning Kitaev Materials with Hydrostatic Pressure
Breakthrough with Ag3LiRh2O6
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The Publication
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59897-7
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