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arXiv · 1608.09011

Confinement in the bulk, deconfinement on the wall: infrared equivalence between compactified QCD and quantum magnets

Tin Sulejmanpasic·Hui Shao·Anders W. Sandvik·Mithat Unsal
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Abstract

In a spontaneously dimerized quantum antiferromagnet, spin-1/2 excitations (spinons) are confined in pairs by strings akin to those confining quarks in non-abelian gauge theories. The system has multiple degenerate ground states (vacua) and domain walls between regions of different vacua. For two vacua, we demonstrate that spinons on a domain wall are liberated, in a mechanism strikingly similar to domain-wall deconfinement of quarks in variants of quantum chromodynamics. This observation not only establishes a novel phenomenon in quantum magnetism, but also provides a new direct link between particle physics and condensed-matter physics. The analogy opens doors to improving our understanding of particle confinement and deconfinement by computational and experimental studies in quantum magnetism.

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Tin Sulejmanpasic, Hui Shao, Anders W. Sandvik, Mithat Unsal. 2016-12-20. Confinement in the bulk, deconfinement on the wall: infrared equivalence between compactified QCD and quantum magnets. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.119.091601

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