Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev type physics in the strained Kitaev honeycomb model

Abstract

In this work, we investigate whether the Kitaev honeycomb model can serve as a starting point to realize the intriguing physics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. The starting point is to strain the system, which leads to flat bands reminiscent of Landau levels, thereby quenching the kinetic energy. The presence of weak residual perturbations, such as Heisenberg interactions and the $\gamma$-term, creates effective interactions between the Majorana modes when projected into the flux-free sector. We assume the resulting interactions to be effectively random. This leads to a bipartite Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model (b-SYK) with very similar properties as the SYK model. We also hypothesize under which conditions one would expect the standard SYK model in such a setup.