Anomalous Magnetic Torque Signal in a Kitaev Spin Liquid Candidate*

The honeycomb iridates have received much attention as potential material realization of Kitaev's exactly solvable honeycomb model, which predicts a quantum spin liquid ground state with fractionalized Majorana excitations. While the presence of magnetic order at low temperature makes the Kitaev nature of the iridates less apparent, it may still be possible to detect high-temperature signatures of the spin liquid state. In this study, we present data on a unique high-temperature phase of lithium iridate as measured by torque magnetometry.