Dept of Theoretical Physics Seminar with Mikael Fremling

Mikael Fremling, Seminar Speaker
Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - 14:00 to 15:00
Hall H, Arts Building, North Campus & on Zoom (details below)

 

Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev physics in strained honeycomb iridates - Theory and byproducts

In this seminar, I will discuss the possibility of having Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) physics in strained honeycomb iridates.

The SYK model needs three ingredients - Majoranas, flat bands, and random all-to-all interactions. The idea is quite simple: Some iridate materials can be modeled with the Kitaev Honeycomb model, and the low energy degrees of freedom are not spins but rather Majorana fermions. By applying strain, the kinetic energy of the Majoranas is quenched, creating flat bands. Finally, taking into account sample impurities and residual Heisenberg interactions, the random all-to-all interactions between the Majoranas will emerge.

In our implementation of the above-described idea, we find a bipartite-cousin of the SYK model, which has tunable scaling dimensions and modified level statistics. The latter will lead to a deep dive into random matrix theory and some software development for the Julia language.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89827315412?pwd=TC9aU1JIV0lteU1MNnNHYlJ4ek81Zz09