Time-domain anyon interferometry in Kitaev honeycomb spin liquids and beyond

Motivated by recent evidence of a non-Abelian spin liquid in α-RuCl₃, we introduce a new experimental method for probing the edge and quasiparticle content of such a phase. Our scheme exploits a pair of ancillary quantum spins that communicate via judicious time-dependent tunneling of energy into and out of the spin liquid’s gapless chiral Majorana edge state. We show that the ancillary-spin dynamics not only probes the Majorana edge modes, but in suitable geometries allows one to detect individual non-Abelian anyons and emergent fermions via a time-domain counterpart of anyon interferometry developed in the quantum-Hall context. The tools that we develop are expected to be widely applicable to topological phases both in solid-state and cold-atoms settings.