Fate of spinons at the Mott point

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the fate of spinons at the Mott transition, showing they are strongly damped and unlikely to influence high-temperature quantum critical behavior, aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a unified model for spin and charge excitations at the Mott transition, revealing a mechanism that suppresses spinon contributions near the critical point.

Findings

Strong damping of spinons at the Mott transition

Spinons are unlikely to influence high-temperature quantum criticality

Theoretical results agree with experimental data

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.