Spinon dynamics in quantum integrable antiferromagnets

Abstract

The excitations of the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chain in zero field are known as spinons. As pairwise-created fractionalized excitations, spinons are important in the understanding of inelastic neutron scattering experiments in (quasi) one-dimensional materials. In the present work, we consider the real space-time dynamics of spinons originating from a local spin flip on the antiferromagnetic ground state of the (an)isotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 model and the Babujan-Takhtajan spin-1 model. By utilizing algebraic Bethe ansatz methods at finite system size to compute the expectation value of the local magnetization and spin-spin correlations, spinons are visualized as propagating domain walls in the antiferromagnetic spin ordering with anisotropy dependent behavior. The spin-spin correlation after the spin flip displays a light cone, satisfying the Lieb-Robinson bound for the propagation of correlations at the spinon velocity.