Strongly scattered phonon heat transport of the candidate Kitaev material <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>Na</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mi>Co</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mi>TeO</mml:mi><mml:mn>6</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>
Xiaochen Hong, Matthias Gillig, Richard Hentrich, Weiliang Yao, Vilmos Kocsis, Arthur R. Witte, Tino Schreiner, Danny Baumann, Nicolás Pérez, A. U. B. Wolter, Yuan Li, B. Büchner, C. Heß
Abstract
Recent proposals suggest that 3$d$ transition-metal systems such as Na${}_{2}$Co${}_{2}$TeO${}_{6}$, in which the cobalt ions form honeycomb lattice sheets, may feature significant Kitaev interaction in spite of nominally weak spin-orbit coupling and thus become candidates for realizing a Kitaev spin liquid (KSL). The authors present data on the thermal conductivity of Na${}_{2}$Co${}_{2}$TeO${}_{6}$ and show that the field-temperature phase diagram strongly resembles that of the iconic prime KSL candidate material $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-RuCl${}_{3}$, suggestive of significant Kitaev physics being at work in Na${}_{2}$Co${}_{2}$TeO${}_{6}$.