Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 28, 2026

A Rapid Method to Confine and Safely Handle Bees in the Field
Published on: August 23, 2024
Spinon confinement and a sharp longitudinal mode in Yb2Pt2Pb in magnetic fields
W J Gannon1,2, I A Zaliznyak3, L S Wu4,5
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA. william.gannon@ubc.ca.
Abstract:
The fundamental excitations in an antiferromagnetic chain of spins-1/2 are spinons, de-confined fractional quasiparticles that when combined in pairs, form a triplet excitation continuum. In an Ising-like spin chain the continuum is gapped and the ground state is Néel ordered. Here, we report high resolution neutron scattering experiments, which reveal how a magnetic field closes this gap and drives the spin chains in Yb2Pt2Pb to a critical, disordered Luttinger-liquid state. In Yb2Pt2Pb the effective spins-1/2 describe the dynamics of large, Ising-like Yb magnetic moments, ensuring that the measured excitations are exclusively longitudinal, which we find to be well described by time-dependent density matrix renormalization group calculations. The inter-chain coupling leads to the confinement of spinons, a condensed matter analog of quark confinement in quantum chromodynamics. Insensitive to transverse fluctuations, our measurements show how a gapless, dispersive longitudinal mode arises from confinement and evolves with magnetic order.
Related Concept Videos
Magnetic Fields
A magnetic field is defined by the force that a charged particle experiences...
Magnetic Field of a Solenoid
Consider a solenoid with 100 turns wrapped around a cylinder of...
Magnetic Field Lines
Magnetic field lines follow several hard-and-fast rules:
Energy In A Magnetic Field
Take an ideal inductor with zero resistance. Although it's practically impossible, assume that the coil's resistance is so small that it is practically negligible. The loss of the field's energy to dissipate thermal energy (or heat) is thus...
Magnetic Field Of A Current Loop
Magnetic Field due to Moving Charges
Consider a point charge moving with a constant velocity. Like the electric field, the magnetic field at any point is directly proportional to the magnitude of the charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the source point and the field point. However, unlike the electric field, the magnetic field is always perpendicular to the plane containing the line...

