Theory of quantum impurities in spin liquids

dc.creatorKolezhuk, Alexei
dc.creatorSachdev, Subir
dc.creatorBiswas, Rudro R.
dc.creatorChen, Peiqiu
dc.date2006-06-14
dc.date2006-10-22
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T07:12:40Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T07:12:40Z
dc.descriptionWe describe spin correlations in the vicinity of a generalized impurity in a wide class of fractionalized spin liquid states. We argue that the primary characterization of the impurity is its electric charge under the gauge field describing singlet excitations in the spin liquid. We focus on two gapless U(1) spin liquids described by 2+1 dimensional conformal field theories (CFT): the staggered flux (sF) spin liquid, and the deconfined critical point between the Neel and valence-bond-solid (VBS) states. In these cases, the electric charge is argued to be an exactly marginal perturbation of the CFT. Consequently, the impurity susceptibility has a 1/T temperature dependence, with an anomalous Curie constant which is a universal number associated with the CFT. One unexpected feature of the CFT of the sF state is that an applied magnetic field does not induce any staggered spin polarization in the vicinity of the impurity (while such a staggered magnetization is present for the Neel-VBS case). These results differ significantly from earlier theories of vacancies in the sF state, and we explicitly demonstrate how our gauge theory corrects these works. We discuss implications of our results for the cuprate superconductors and organic Mott insulators.
dc.description16 pages, 7 figures; (v2) added discussion on relevance to graphene; (v3) corrected estimate of size of bound state in the spin gap phase; (v4) corrected technical problem with pdf; (v5) corrected error in Eq. (2.13), pointed out by Max Metlitski
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0606385
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0606385
dc.identifierPhysical Review B 74, 165114 (2006)
dc.identifierdoi:10.1103/PhysRevB.74.165114
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/112157
dc.subjectStrongly Correlated Electrons
dc.subjectSuperconductivity
dc.titleTheory of quantum impurities in spin liquids
dc.typetext

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