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Layered honeycomb magnets with strong atomic spin–orbit coupling at transition metal sites have been intensively studied for the search of Kitaev magnetism and the resulting non-Abelian braiding statistics. α -RuCl 3 has been the most promising candidate, and there have been several reports on the realization of sibling compounds α -RuBr 3 and α -RuI 3 with the same crystal structure. Here, we investigate correlated electronic structures of α -RuCl 3 and α -RuI 3 by employing first-principles dynamical mean-field theory. Our result provides a valuable insight into the discrepancy between experimental and theoretical reports on transport properties of α -RuI 3 , and suggests a potential realization of correlated flat bands with strong spin–orbit coupling and a quantum spin-Hall insulating phase in α -RuI 3 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The laser-irradiated kitaev-heisenberg ferromagnet can reveal two topological phases. • The topological phase of the present laser-irradiated ferromagnet can be tuned by the light intensity. • The sign reversal of the thermal hall conductivity is a significant indicator on the photoinduced topological phase transition of the kitaev material. We theoretically study topological properties of Floquet magnons in a laser-irradiated Kitaev-Heisenberg honeycomb ferromagnet with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction by making use of the Floquet-Bloch theory. It is found that the Kitaev-Heisenberg honeycomb ferromagnet can reveal two topological phases with different Chern numbers when it is irradiated by the circular-polarized light. We find that the topological phase of the system can be switched from one topological phase to another one by adjusting the light intensity. The intrinsic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction plays a crucial role in the emergence of photoinduced topological phase transitions. It is shown that sign reversal of the thermal Hall conductivity is an important indicator on photoinduced topological phase transitions in the Kitaev-Heisenberg honeycomb ferromagnet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]