Islands of chiral solitons in integer-spin Kitaev chains

An intriguing chiral soliton phase has recently been identified in the S=12 Kitaev spin chain. Here we show that for S = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 an analogous phase can be identified, but contrary to the S=12 case the chiral soliton phases appear as islands within the sea of the polarized phase. In fact, a small field applied in a general direction will adiabatically connect the integer spin Kitaev chain to the polarized phase. Only at sizable …