Journal
NATURE PHYSICS
Volume 9, Issue 7, Pages 435-441Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NPHYS2652
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Funding
- US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering [DE-FG02-08ER46544]
- Deutsche Bundesministerium fur Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (BMBF) [03KN5SAA]
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
- European Research Council (ERC)
- Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM)
- Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
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One of the simplest quantum many-body systems is the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain, a linear array of interacting magnetic moments. Its exact ground state is a macroscopic singlet entangling all spins in the chain. Its elementary excitations, called spinons, are fractional spin-1/2 quasiparticles created and detected in pairs by neutron scattering. Theoretical predictions show that two-spinon states exhaust only 71% of the spectral weight and higher-order spinon states, yet to be experimentally located, are predicted to participate in the remaining. Here, by accurate absolute normalization of our inelastic neutron scattering data on a spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain compound, we account for the full spectral weight to within 99(8)%. Our data thus establish and quantify the existence of higher-order spinon states. The observation that, within error bars, the experimental line shape resembles a rescaled two-spinon one with similar boundaries allows us to develop a simple picture for understanding multi-spinon excitations.
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