Electronic Structures of Kitaev Magnet Candidates RuCl3 and RuI3

초록

Layered honeycomb magnets with strong atomic spin-orbit coupling at transition metal sites have been intensively studied for the search of Kitaev magnetism and the resulting non-Abelian braiding statistics. alpha-RuCl3 has been the most promising candidate, and there have been several reports on the realization of sibling compounds alpha-RuBr3 and alpha-RuI3 with the same crystal structure. Here, we investigate correlated electronic structures of alpha-RuCl3 and alpha-RuI3 by employing first-rinciples dynamical mean-field theory. Our result provides a valuable insight into the discrepancy between experimental and theoretical reports on transport properties of alpha-RuI3, and suggests a potential realization of correlated flat bands with strong spin-orbit coupling and a quantum spin-Hall insulating phase in alpha-RuI3.

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