Deciphering competing interactions of Kitaev–Heisenberg-Γ system in clusters: I. Static properties

Recently, the Kitaev-Heisenberg-Γ system has been used to explore various aspects of Kitaev spin liquid physics. Here, we consider a few small clusters of up to twelve sites and study them in detail to unravel many interesting findings due to the competition between all possible signs and various magnitudes of these interactions under the influence of an external magnetic field. When Heisenberg interaction is taken anti-ferromagnetic, one obtains plateaus in correlation functions where, surprisingly, the exact groundstate reduces to the eigenstate of Heisenberg interaction as well. On the other hand, for ferromagnetic Heisenberg interaction, its competition with Kitaev interaction results in non-monotonicity in the correlation functions. We discuss, in detail, the competing effects on low energy spectrum, flux operator, magnetization, susceptibility, and specific heat. Finally, we discuss how our findings could be helpful to explain some of the recent experimental and theoretical findings in materials with Kitaev interactions.