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Auteurs principaux: Feng, Shi, Zhu, Penghao, Knolle, Johannes, Knap, Michael
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07062
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author Feng, Shi
Zhu, Penghao
Knolle, Johannes
Knap, Michael
author_facet Feng, Shi
Zhu, Penghao
Knolle, Johannes
Knap, Michael
contents Several candidate materials for gapless quantum spin liquids exhibit a vanishing thermal conductivity, which is at odds with theoretical predictions. Here, we show that a suppressed response can arise due to transient localization from fractionalization, even in the absence of extrinsic defects or disorder. Concretely, we consider a Kitaev ladder model in a uniform magnetic field, whose spin degrees of freedom fractionalize into visons and spinons. For moderate magnetic fields, visons are heavy and act as quasi-static disorder that induce transient localization of light spinons even in the translation-invariant model and at zero temperature, which strongly suppresses the residual conductivity at finite but low frequencies. At ultralow frequencies the conductivity is restored; however, such scales can be extremely hard to reach in experiments. Our results identify transient localization as a signature of fractionalization and provide a framework for interpreting anomalous transport in gapless spin liquid candidates.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_07062
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Transient localization from fractionalization: vanishingly small heat conductivity in gapless quantum magnets
Feng, Shi
Zhu, Penghao
Knolle, Johannes
Knap, Michael
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Several candidate materials for gapless quantum spin liquids exhibit a vanishing thermal conductivity, which is at odds with theoretical predictions. Here, we show that a suppressed response can arise due to transient localization from fractionalization, even in the absence of extrinsic defects or disorder. Concretely, we consider a Kitaev ladder model in a uniform magnetic field, whose spin degrees of freedom fractionalize into visons and spinons. For moderate magnetic fields, visons are heavy and act as quasi-static disorder that induce transient localization of light spinons even in the translation-invariant model and at zero temperature, which strongly suppresses the residual conductivity at finite but low frequencies. At ultralow frequencies the conductivity is restored; however, such scales can be extremely hard to reach in experiments. Our results identify transient localization as a signature of fractionalization and provide a framework for interpreting anomalous transport in gapless spin liquid candidates.
title Transient localization from fractionalization: vanishingly small heat conductivity in gapless quantum magnets
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07062