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Kondo screening in a charge-insulating spinon metal

Gomilšek, M.; Žitko, R.; Klanjšek, M.; Pregelj, M.; Baines, C.; Li, Y.; Zhang, Q.M.; Zorko, A.

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Authors

M. Gomilšek

R. Žitko

M. Klanjšek

M. Pregelj

C. Baines

Y. Li

Q.M. Zhang

A. Zorko



Abstract

The Kondo effect, an eminent manifestation of many-body physics in condensed matter, is traditionally explained as exchange scattering of conduction electrons on a spinful impurity in a metal1,2. The resulting screening of the impurity’s local moment by the electron Fermi sea is characterized by a Kondo temperature TK, below which the system enters a strongly coupled regime. In recent years, this effect has found realizations beyond the bulk-metal paradigm in many other conduction-electron systems, such as in quantum dots in semiconductor heterostructures3,4 and nanomaterials5,6,7, in quantum point contacts8,9, in graphene10,11 and in topological insulators12, and has also been predicted for three-dimensional Dirac and Weyl semimetals13. Here, we report an experimental observation of Kondo screening by charge-neutral quasiparticles. This occurs in a charge-insulating quantum spin liquid, where spinon excitations forming a Fermi surface take the role of conduction electrons. The observed impurity behaviour therefore bears a strong resemblance to the conventional case in a metal. The discovered spinon-based Kondo effect provides a prominent platform for characterizing spin liquids in the general context of utilizing impurities as in situ probes of host electron states14,15, and offers a unique way to manipulate these enigmatic states.

Citation

Gomilšek, M., Žitko, R., Klanjšek, M., Pregelj, M., Baines, C., Li, Y., …Zorko, A. (2019). Kondo screening in a charge-insulating spinon metal. Nature Physics, 15(8), 754-758. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0536-2

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 12, 2019
Online Publication Date May 27, 2019
Publication Date Aug 1, 2019
Deposit Date May 31, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Nature Physics
Print ISSN 1745-2473
Electronic ISSN 1745-2481
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
Issue 8
Pages 754-758
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0536-2
Related Public URLs https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.06506

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