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  • Letter

Quantitative determination of the confinement and deconfinement of spinons in the anomalous spectra of antiferromagnets via the entanglement entropy

Zhao-Yang Dong1, Wei Wang2,*, Zhao-Long Gu3,†, and Jian-Xin Li3,4,‡

  • 1Department of Applied Physics, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
  • 2School of Science, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210023, China
  • 3National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
  • 4Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China

  • *wwang@njupt.edu.cn
  • †waltergu1989@gmail.com
  • ‡jxli@nju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. B 104, L180406 – Published 17 November, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.104.L180406

Abstract

We introduce an entanglement entropy analysis to quantitatively identify the confinement and deconfinement of the spinons in the spin excitations of quantum magnets. Our proposal is implemented by the parton construction of a honeycomb-lattice antiferromagnet exhibiting high-energy anomalous spectra. To obtain the quasiparticles of spin excitations for entanglement entropy calculations, we develop an effective Hamiltonian using the random phase approximation. We elaborate quantitatively the deconfinement-to-confinement transition of spinons in the anomalous spectra with the increase of the Hubbard interaction, indicating the avoided fractionalization of magnons in the strong interaction regime. Meanwhile, the Higgs mode at the Γ′ point is fractionalized into four degenerate spinons, although it appears as a sharp well-defined peak in the spectra. Our work extends our understanding of the deconfinement of the spinon and its coexistence with the magnon in quantum magnets.

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Phys. Rev. B 104, L180406– Published 17 November, 2021
  • Received 5 July 2021
  • Accepted 8 November 2021
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