Inelastic neutron scattering signal from deconfined spinons in a fractionalized antiferromagnet

Abstract

We calculate the contribution of deconfined spinons to inelastic neutron scattering (INS) in the fractionalized antiferromagnet (AF*), introduced elsewhere. We find that the presence of free spin-1/2 charge-less excitations leads to a continuum INS signal above the Neel gap. This signal is found above and in addition to the usual spin-1 magnon signal, which to lowest order is the same as in the more conventional confined antiferromagnet. We calculate the relative weights of these two signals and find that the spinons contribute to the longitudinal response, where the magnon signal is absent to lowest order. Possible higher-order effects of interactions between magnons and spinons in the AF* phase are also discussed.

9 pages

References in corpus (1)

• The Electron Spectral Function in Two-Dimensional Fractionalized Phases

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Observation of extended scattering continua characteristic of spin fractionalization in the 2D frustrated quantum magnet Cs2CuCl4 by neutron scattering
• Anomalous High-Energy Spin Excitations in La2CuO4
• Higher order effective low-energy theories
• Thermal Transport of Fractionalized Antiferromagnetic and Field Induced States in the Kitaev Material Na${}_2$Co${}_2$TeO${}_6$
• Quantum Spin Supersolid as a precursory Dirac Spin Liquid in a Triangular Lattice Antiferromagnet
• Clusterization transition between cluster Mott insulators on a breathing Kagomé lattice
• Coulombic antiferromagnet in spin-1/2 pyrochlores with dipole-octupole doublets