Quantum spin liquids

C Broholm; R J Cava; S A Kivelson; D G Nocera; M R Norman; T Senthil

doi:10.1126/science.aay0668

Quantum spin liquids

Science. 2020 Jan 17;367(6475):eaay0668. doi: 10.1126/science.aay0668.

Authors

C Broholm¹, R J Cava², S A Kivelson³, D G Nocera⁴, M R Norman⁵, T Senthil⁶

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Quantum Matter and Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
² Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
³ Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
⁵ Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA. norman@anl.gov.
⁶ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

PMID: 31949052
DOI: 10.1126/science.aay0668

Abstract

Spin liquids are quantum phases of matter with a variety of unusual features arising from their topological character, including "fractionalization"-elementary excitations that behave as fractions of an electron. Although there is not yet universally accepted experimental evidence that establishes that any single material has a spin liquid ground state, in the past few years a number of materials have been shown to exhibit distinctive properties that are expected of a quantum spin liquid. Here, we review theoretical and experimental progress in this area.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.