Spinons, triplons, and ordering in quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnets

by L. Balents (UCSB)

Wednesday 5 Sept 2007, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

One dimensional spin chains have been a subject of theoretical study for *many* decades. A remarkable feature of such chains is the existence of "spinons", neutral spin-1/2 excitations which "fractionalize" the naively elementary spin-flip. Experiments on the material Cs2CuCl4 have shown a remarkable similarity of the excitation spectrum to that of one dimensional spin chains, despite quite large inter-chain exchange (approximately 1/3 of the intra-chain exchange). I will discuss the theory of these experiments, and of the low temperature ordering in such systems.