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arXiv · 1607.00761

Fate of spinons at the Mott point

Tsung-Han Lee·Serge Florens·Vladimir Dobrosavljevic
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Abstract

Gapless spin liquids have recently been observed in several frustrated Mott insulators, with elementary spin excitations - "spinons" - reminiscent of degenerate Fermi systems. However, their precise role at the Mott point, where charge fluctuations begin to proliferate, remains controversial and ill-understood. Here we present the simplest theoretical framework that treats the dynamics of emergent spin and charge excitations on the same footing, providing a new physical picture of the Mott metal-insulator transition at half filing. We identify a generic orthogonality mechanism leading to strong damping of spinons, arising as soon as the Mott gap closes. Our results indicates that spinons should not play a significant role within the high-temperature quantum critical regime above the Mott point - in striking agreement with all available experiments.

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Tsung-Han Lee, Serge Florens, Vladimir Dobrosavljevic. 2016-09-21. Fate of spinons at the Mott point. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.117.136601

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