Hart Oliver, Wan Yuan, Castelnovo Claudio
T.C.M. Group, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Nat Commun. 2021 Mar 5;12(1):1459. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21495-8.
Realistic model Hamiltonians for quantum spin liquids frequently exhibit a large separation of energy scales between their elementary excitations. At intermediate, experimentally relevant temperatures, some excitations are sparse and hop coherently, whereas others are thermally incoherent and dense. Here, we study the interplay of two such species of quasiparticle, dubbed spinons and visons, which are subject to nontrivial mutual statistics - one of the hallmarks of quantum spin liquid behaviour. Our results for [Formula: see text] quantum spin liquids show an intriguing feedback mechanism, akin to the Nagaoka effect, whereby spinons become localised on temperature-dependent patches of expelled visons. This phenomenon has important consequences for the thermodynamic and transport properties of the system, as well as for its response to quenches in temperature. We argue that these effects can be measured in experiments and may provide viable avenues for obtaining signatures of quantum spin liquid behaviour.
用于量子自旋液体的现实模型哈密顿量，其基本激发之间的能量尺度常常呈现出很大的分离。在中等的、与实验相关的温度下，一些激发是稀疏的且能相干跳跃，而另一些则是热不相干且密集的。在这里，我们研究了两种这样的准粒子（称为自旋子和磁通子）之间的相互作用，它们具有非平凡的相互统计特性——这是量子自旋液体行为的标志之一。我们对[公式：见正文]量子自旋液体的研究结果显示了一种类似于永冈效应的有趣反馈机制，即自旋子会局域在被逐出的磁通子的温度依赖斑块上。这种现象对系统的热力学和输运性质以及其对温度猝灭的响应都有重要影响。我们认为这些效应可以在实验中测量，并且可能为获得量子自旋液体行为的特征提供可行途径。
