Gapless excitations in non-Abelian Kitaev spin liquids with line defects

Abstract

We show that line defects in a non-Abelian Kitaev spin liquid harbor gapless one-dimensional Majorana modes if the interaction across the defect falls below a critical value. Treating the weak interaction at the line defect within a mean-field approximation, we determine the critical interaction strength as a function of the external magnetic field. In the gapless regime, we use the low-energy effective field theory to calculate the spin-lattice relaxation rate for a nuclear spin near the defect and find a cubic temperature dependence that agrees with experiments in the Kitaev material $\alpha\text{-RuCl}_3$.