Probing the Ground States of the Kitaev-Heisenberg Model in RuCl3 through Guarded Electrical Measurements

Alpha Ruthenium Chloride (α-RuCl3) is part of a special class of Mott insulators, Kitaev materials, that exhibit strong spin orbit coupling and bond directional exchange interactions. In particular, the Kitaev-Heisenberg model predicts this material to host interesting ground states such as a Quantum Spin Liquid (QSL) with fractionalized excitations making it ideal for applications in topological quantum computing, as well as magnetic ordered states. Through guarded measurements of RuCl3 thin crystal electronic devices, we find that electronic transport is dominated by thermally activated transport at high temperatures and Efros-Shklovskii Variable Range Hopping transport at low temperatures down to the known zig zag antiferromagnetic ordering transition for RuCl3. Measurements demonstrate that this antiferromagnetic ordering is robust up to fields of 11T out of the plane. Future experiments will explore the effects of a magnetic field in the plane of the sample and its effect on the electronic transport mechanism.