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

TL;DR

This paper reveals a novel analogy between confinement phenomena in quantum chromodynamics and quantum magnets, showing that spinons can become deconfined on domain walls, linking particle physics concepts with condensed matter systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates that spinons are deconfined on domain walls in quantum magnets, establishing a new link between confinement in particle physics and condensed matter phenomena.

Findings

Spinons are confined in bulk but deconfined on domain walls.

The mechanism resembles quark deconfinement in QCD.

Provides a new platform to study confinement phenomena.

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.