Fractionalization induced structural domain patterns in U(1) quantum spin liquids (2303.07341v1)

Abstract: The emergence of fractionalized quasiparticles in quantum spin liquids has served a wealth of unconventional phenomena in frustrated magnets. In our work, we explore the various domain patterns of such fractionalized quasiparticles, especially focusing on charge defects in U(1) quantum spin liquids. We claim that emergent long range interaction between charge defects leads to characteristic structures with distinct length scales, where they can be controlled via the ratio of interaction strengths. In this context, the spin ice phase is the dilute gas of weakly interacting charges, whereas, the macroscopic population of charge defects naturally develops charge ordering for large Coulomb interaction limit. Interestingly, we find that the competing spin interactions could naturally give rise to stabilize the mosaic structure of charge defects in the absence of uniform ordering. They are characterized by liquid-like correlations having a finite length scale. The emergence of such intermediate order in the mosaic structure is confirmed by both dynamical and static correlations. By establishing the microscopic spin Hamiltonian, we also present the distinctive signatures in static spin correlation to detect such spatial structure of charge defects. We speculate that the domain pattern of defect population might be a potential hallmark to reveal unusual dynamical properties observed in spin liquids.