Nonperturbative Semiclassical Spin Dynamics for Ordered Quantum Magnets

ORAL

Abstract

In ordered quantum magnets where interactions between elementary excitations dominate over their kinetic energy, perturbative approaches often fail, making non-perturbative methods essential to capture spectral features such as bound states and the redistribution of weight within excitation continua. Although an increasing number of experiments report anomalous spin excitation continua in such systems, their microscopic interpretation remains an open challenge. Here, we investigate the spin dynamics of the triangular-lattice antiferromagnet in its 1/3-plateau phase using two complementary non-perturbative approaches: exact diagonalization in a truncated Hilbert space for a gas of elementary excitations (THED) and matrix product state (MPS) simulations. Alongside cross-validation between these methods, we benchmark our results against inelastic neutron scattering (INS) data. The THED analysis confirms the presence of two-magnon bound states and identifies the anomalous scattering continuum observed in both MPS and INS as a two-magnon resonance, arising from hybridization between the bound state and the two-magnon continuum. Furthermore, THED reveals bound states overlapping with the continuum, enriching the interpretation of continuum anomalies. More broadly, THED provides a robust framework for investigating anomalous spin excitation continua and bound-state effects in other materials with gapped spectra. Its combination of accuracy and computational efficiency makes it a powerful tool for extracting reliable microscopic models in semiclassical regimes.

*Work at the University of Tennessee was supported by National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program through the UT Knoxville Center for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (DMR-2309083) and by the Lincoln Chair of Excellence in Physics. The work at LANL is supported by the Quantum Science Center (QSC), a National Quantum Information Science Research Center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).Work at ETHZ was partially supported by a MINT grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Data on K2Co(SeO3)2 were collected using the AMATERAS spectrometer at J-PARC in Experiment no. 2023B0161.Tao Xie was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFA1613100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12304187), the Guangzhou Basic and Applied Basic Research Funds (Grant No. 2024A04J4024), and the open research fund of Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory (Grant No. 2023SLABFN30). The neutron scattering experiments of CsYbSe2 were performed on the time-of-flight (ToF) Cold Neutron Chopper Spectrometer (CNCS) at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Publication: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21142

Presenters

  • Hao Zhang

    • University of Tennessee
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)

Authors

  • Hao Zhang

    • University of Tennessee
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
  • Tianyue Huang

    • Institute of Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
  • Allen O Scheie

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • Mengze Zhu

    • ETH Zurich
  • Tao Xie

    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Naoki Murai

    • Japan Atomic Energy Agency
  • Seiko O Ohira-Kawamura

    • -PARC Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency
    • Japan Atomic Energy Agency
    • J-PARC
  • Andrey Zheludev

    • ETH Zurich
  • Andreas M Läuchli

    • Paul Scherrer Institute
  • Cristian D Batista

    • University of Tennessee