Statistics of Fractionalized Excitations through Threshold Spectroscopy

• Main Authors: Morampudi, Siddhardh C. (Author), Turner, Ari M. (Author), Pollmann, Frank (Author), Wilczek, Frank (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society (APS), 2018-09-17T14:17:51Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We show that neutral anyonic excitations have a signature in spectroscopic measurements of materials: The low-energy onset of spectral functions near the threshold follows universal power laws with an exponent that depends only on the statistics of the anyons. This provides a route, using experimental techniques such as neutron scattering and tunneling spectroscopy, for detecting anyonic statistics in topologically ordered states such as gapped quantum spin liquids and hypothesized fractional Chern insulators. Our calculations also explain some recent theoretical results in spin systems.
German Research Foundation (Grant No. SFB 1143)
German Research Foundation. FOR 1807 (Grant No. P01370/2-1)
United States. Department of Energy (Contract No. DE-SC0012567)