Spinon walk in quantum spin ice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamics of spinons in quantum spin ice, revealing that they behave as massive quasiparticles at low energies despite strong microscopic coupling, with implications for experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal model capturing spinon-background coupling and maps their motion to a random walk with entropy-induced memory, providing new insights into spinon propagation.

Findings

Spinons propagate as massive quasiparticles at low energy.

The model maps spinon motion to a random walk with memory.

Numerical simulations support the quasiparticle behavior.

Abstract

We study a minimal model for the dynamics of spinons in quantum spin ice. The model captures the essential strong coupling between the spinon and the disordered background spins. We demonstrate that the spinon motion can be mapped to a random walk with an entropy-induced memory in imaginary time. Our numerical simulation of the spinon walk indicates that the spinon propagates as a massive quasiparticle at low energy despite its strong coupling to the spin background at the microscopic energy scale. We discuss the experimental implications of our findings.