Spinon confinement: dynamics of weakly coupled Hubbard chains

TL;DR

This study uses advanced quantum Monte Carlo simulations to explore how weak interchain coupling in Hubbard chains influences spin and charge dynamics, revealing a transition from spinon confinement to deconfinement and the emergence of long-range magnetic order.

Contribution

It provides detailed numerical evidence of spinon confinement and deconfinement in weakly coupled Hubbard chains, connecting 1D and 2D magnetic behaviors.

Findings

Transition from power-law to long-range antiferromagnetic order with increasing interchain coupling

Charge sector remains gapped in the studied regime

Magnon modes are well described by linear spin-wave theory and are related to bound spinon states

Abstract

Using large-scale determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations in combination with the stochastic analytical continuation, we study two-particle dynamical correlation functions in the anisotropic square lattice of weakly coupled one-dimensional (1D) Hubbard chains at half-filling and in the presence of weak frustration. The evolution of the static spin structure factor upon increasing the interchain coupling is suggestive of the transition from the power-law decay of spin-spin correlations in the 1D limit to long-range antiferromagnetic order in the quasi-1D regime and at $T=0$. In the numerically accessible regime of interchain couplings, the charge sector remains gapped. The low-energy momentum dependence of the spin excitations is well described by the linear spin-wave theory with the largest intensity located around the antiferromagnetic wave vector. This magnon mode corresponds to a bound state of two spinons. At higher energies the spinons deconfine and we observe signatures of the two-spinon continuum which progressively fade away as a function of interchain hopping.