Spinon

Summary

Spinons are one of three quasiparticles, along with holons and orbitons, that electrons in solids are able to split into during the process of spin–charge separation, when extremely tightly confined at temperatures close to absolute zero. The electron can always be theoretically considered as a bound state of the three, with the spinon carrying the spin of the electron, the orbiton carrying the orbital location and the holon carrying the charge, but in certain conditions they can behave as independent quasiparticles. The term spinon is frequently used in discussions of experimental facts within the framework of both quantum spin liquid and strongly correlated quantum spin liquid. Overview Electrons, being of like charge, repel each other. As a result, in order to move past each other in an extremely crowded environment, they are forced to modify their behavior. Research published in July 2009 by the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham in England showed t

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinon

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (12)

Related publications

Related people (2)

Related people

Related units (2)

Related units

Related concepts (5)

Related concepts

Related courses (3)

Related courses

Related lectures (4)

Related lectures

Spinon confinement and deconfinement in spin-1 chains

Natalia Chepiga, Frédéric Mila, Elisabeth Wybo

Motivated by the rich phase diagrams recently unveiled in frustrated spin-1 chains with competing next-nearest-neighbor and four-spin interactions, we investigate the nature of the elementary excitations of spin-1 chains in the vicinity of phase transitions using the matrix-product state (MPS) representation of elementary excitations. First, we show that both spinons and magnons naturally arise in SU(2) invariant spin chains when describing ground states and elementary excitations using MPSs. Then we investigate the nature of the elementary excitations across the first-order transition between the Haldane phase and the topologically trivial next-nearest-neighbor Haldane phase. We show explicitly that spinons deconfine at the transition, and we calculate the dispersion of these deconfined spinons with MPSs. We also show that, immediately away from the transition line, spinons confine, forming dispersive spinon/antispinon bound states on both sides of the transition. Finally, we show that deconfined spinons also appear at the transition between the Haldane phase and the spontaneously dimerized phase when this transition is first order.

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2020

Fractional spinon excitations in the quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain

Jean-Sebastien Caux, Mechthild Enderle, Martin Mourigal, Henrik Moodysson Rønnow

One of the simplest quantum many-body systems is the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain, a linear array of interacting magnetic moments. Its exact ground state is a macroscopic singlet entangling all spins in the chain. Its elementary excitations, called spinons, are fractional spin-1/2 quasiparticles created and detected in pairs by neutron scattering. Theoretical predictions show that two-spinon states exhaust only 71% of the spectral weight and higher-order spinon states, yet to be experimentally located, are predicted to participate in the remaining. Here, by accurate absolute normalization of our inelastic neutron scattering data on a spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain compound, we account for the full spectral weight to within 99(8)%. Our data thus establish and quantify the existence of higher-order spinon states. The observation that, within error bars, the experimental line shape resembles a rescaled two-spinon one with similar boundaries allows us to develop a simple picture for understanding multi-spinon excitations.

Nature Publishing Group2013

We report the structural transformation of hexagonal Ba3YIr 2O9 to a cubic double perovskite form (stable in ambient conditions) under an applied pressure of 8 GPa at 1273 K. While the ambient pressure synthesized sample undergoes long-range magnetic ordering at ∼4 K, the high-pressure (HP) synthesized sample does not order down to 2 K as evidenced from our susceptibility, heat capacity, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements. Further, for the HP sample, our heat capacity data have the form γT+βT3 in the temperature (T) range of 2-10 K with the Sommerfeld coefficient γ=10 mJ/mol-Ir K2. The 89Y NMR shift has no T dependence in the range of 4-120 K and its spin-lattice relaxation rate varies linearly with T in the range of 8-45 K (above which it is T independent). Resistance measurements of both the samples confirm that they are semiconducting. Our data provide evidence for the formation of a 5d-based, gapless, quantum spin-liquid in the cubic (HP) phase of Ba3YIr 2O9. In this picture, the γT term in the heat capacity and the linear variation of 89Y 1/T1 arises from excitations out of a spinon Fermi surface. Our findings lend credence to the theoretical suggestion that strong spin-orbit coupling can enhance quantum fluctuations and lead to a QSL state in the double perovskite lattice. © 2013 American Physical Society.

2013