Magnetic Impurity as a Local Probe of the U(1) Quantum Spin Liquid with Spinon Fermi Surface

Abstract

We solve the problem of a magnetic impurity coupled to a U(1) quantum spin liquid with spinon Fermi surface and compute the impurity spectral function. Using the slave rotor mean field approach combined with gauge field fluctuations, we find that a peak located at the top of the lower Hubbard band and one at the bottom of the upper Hubbard band can emerge in the impurity spectral function. The peaks at the Hubbard band edges arise from the gauge field fluctuations induced spinon chargon binding inside the spinon Kondo screening cloud of the magnetic impurity. For a magnetic impurity embedded in a Mott insulator, our findings suggest that the emergence of a pair of peaks at the Hubbard band edges in the impurity density of states spectra provides strong evidence that the host Mott insulator is a U(1) quantum spin liquid with spinon Fermi surface.

16 pages, 5 figures. Comments are welcome

References in corpus (14)

• U(1) Gauge Theory of the Hubbard Model : Spin Liquid States and Possible Application to k-(BEDT-TTF)_2 Cu_2 (CN)_3
• Low energy effective theory of Fermi surface coupled with U(1) gauge field in 2+1 dimensions
• On the stability of U(1) spin liquids in two dimensions
• Imaging spinon density modulations in a 2D quantum spin liquid
• Distinguishing a Mott Insulator from a Trivial Insulator with Atomic Adsorbates
• Theory of quantum impurities in spin liquids
• Kondo screening in a charge-insulating spinon metal
• Inducing and tuning Kondo screening in a narrow-electronic-band system
• Low-energy behavior of spin-liquid electron spectral functions
• Impurity-induced resonant spinon zero modes in Dirac quantum spin-liquids
• Doublon-like excitations and their phononic coupling in a Mott charge-density-wave system
• Kondo physics in the algebraic spin liquid
• Susceptibility of a spinon Fermi surface coupled to a U(1) gauge field
• Emergent Kondo behavior from gauge fluctuations in spin liquids

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Evidence for a spinon Kondo effect in cobalt atoms on single-layer 1T-TaSe${}_2$
• Probing quantum spin liquids with a quantum twisting microscope
• Kondo effect in twisted bilayer graphene
• Edge zeros and boundary spinons in topological Mott insulators
• Electronic Density of States of a $U\left(1\right)$ Quantum Spin Liquid with Spinon Fermi Surface. I. Orbital Magnetic Field Effects
• Electronic Density of States of a $U\left(1\right)$ Quantum Spin Liquid with Spinon Fermi Surface. II. Zeeman Magnetic Field Effects
• $Z_2$ flux binding to higher-spin impurities in the Kitaev spin liquid
• Theory of quasiparticle interference in Kitaev quantum spin liquids
• Local spin-flip transitions induced by magnetic quantum impurities in two-dimensional magnets
• Chiral spin liquid phase in an optical lattice at mean-field level
• Hamiltonian-learning quantum magnets with non-local impurity tomography
• Tunneling spectroscopy of the spinon-Kondo effect in one-dimensional Mott insulators
• Topical review: the nature of the ground state and possibility of a quantum spin liquid in 1T metal dichalcogenides
• Topological strongly correlated phases in orthorhombic diamond lattice compounds
• Kondo Screening Cloud Scaling: Impurity Entanglement and Magnetization
• Detecting symmetry fractionalization in gapped quantum spin liquids by magnetic impurities
• Sensing the binding and unbinding of anyons at impurities