Fractional matter coupled to the emergent gauge field in a quantum spin ice

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
العنوان: Fractional matter coupled to the emergent gauge field in a quantum spin ice
المؤلفون: Porée, Victor, Yan, Han, Desrochers, Félix, Petit, Sylvain, Lhotel, Elsa, Appel, Markus, Ollivier, Jacques, Kim, Yong Baek, Nevidomskyy, Andriy H., Sibille, Romain
سنة النشر: 2023
المجموعة: Condensed Matter
مصطلحات موضوعية: Condensed Matter - Strongly Correlated Electrons
الوصف: Electronic spins can form long-range entangled phases of condensed matter named quantum spin liquids. Their existence is conceptualized in models of two- or three-dimensional frustrated magnets that evade symmetry-breaking order down to zero temperature. Quantum spin ice (QSI) is a theoretically well-established example described by an emergent quantum electrodynamics, with excitations behaving like photon and matter quasiparticles. The latter are fractionally charged and equivalent to the `spinons' emerging from coherent phases of singlets in one dimension, where clear experimental proofs of fractionalization exist. However, in frustrated magnets it remains difficult to establish consensual evidence for quantum spin liquid ground states and their fractional excitations. Here, we use backscattering neutron spectroscopy to achieve extremely high resolution of the time-dependent magnetic response of the candidate QSI material Ce$_2$Sn$_2$O$_7$. We find a gapped spectrum featuring a threshold and peaks that match theories for pair production and propagation of fractional matter excitations (spinons) strongly coupled to a background gauge field. The multiple peaks are a specific signature of the $\pi$-flux phase of QSI, providing spectroscopic evidence for fractionalization in a three-dimensional quantum spin liquid.
Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, updated text and references
نوع الوثيقة: Working Paper
URL الوصول: http://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05452
رقم الأكسشن: edsarx.2304.05452
قاعدة البيانات: arXiv