Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: We provide an intuitive understanding of the collective low-energy spin excitation of the one-dimensional spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain, known as the spinon. To this end, we demonstrate how a single spinon can be excited by adding one extra spin to the ground state. This procedure accurately reproduces all key features of the spinon's dispersion. These follow from the vanishing norm of the excited state which is triggered by the ground state entanglement. Next, we show that the spinon dispersion can be approximately reproduced if we replace the true ground state with the simplest valence-bond solid. This proves that the spinon of the one-dimensional Heisenberg model can be understood as a single spin flowing through a valence-bond solid.
Source: Physical Review Letters
DOI: 10.1103/stvg-lg9h
Institutions: University of Warsaw, University of British Columbia
Language: English
Topic: Quantum many-body systems
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, Narodowe Centrum Nauki, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, University of British Columbia, Interdyscyplinarne Centrum Modelowania Matematycznego i Komputerowego UW, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
OpenAlex ID: W4410853577