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Monopole Josephson effects in a Dirac spin liquid

Gautam Nambiar1,*, Daniel Bulmash1,2, and Victor Galitski1

  • 1Joint Quantum Institute, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
  • 2Condensed Matter Theory Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA

  • *Corresponding author: nambiar@terpmail.umd.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, 013169 – Published 13 March, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.013169

Abstract

Dirac spin liquids (DSLs) are gapless featureless states, yet interesting by virtue of the effective field theory describing them—(2 + 1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (QED3). Further, a DSL is known to be a “parent state” of various seemingly unrelated ordered states, such as antiferromagnets and valence bond solids in the sense that one can obtain ordered states by condensing magnetic monopoles of the emergent gauge field. Can operators in the effective field theory, such as the emergent electric field, be externally induced and measured? In this work, we exploit the parent state picture to argue that the answer is yes. We propose a range of “monopole Josephson effects” that arise when two ordered states are separated by a region of the parent DSL. In particular, we show that one can induce an AC monopole Josephson effect, which manifests itself as an AC emergent electric field in the spin liquid, accompanied by a measurable spin current. Further, we show that this AC emergent electric field can be measured as a sharp tunable peak in Raman scattering. This work provides a theoretical proof of principle that emergent gauge fields in spin liquids can be externally induced, manipulated, and probed using more conventional states, which offers a generic platform for studying the exotic spin phases.

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, 013169– Published 13 March, 2023
  • Received 18 July 2022
  • Accepted 4 January 2023
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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