Detecting Fractionalization in Critical Spin Liquids using Color Centers

Abstract: Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) are highly entangled ground states of insulating spin systems, in which magnetic ordering is prevented down to the lowest temperatures due to quantum fluctuations. One of the most extraordinary characteristics of QSL phases is their ability to support fractionalized, low-energy quasiparticles known as spinons, which carry spin-1/2 but bear no charge. Relaxometry based on color centers in crystalline materials -- of which nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are a well-explored example -- provides an exciting new platform to probe the spin spectral functions of magnetic materials with both energy and momentum resolution and to search for signatures of these elusive, fractionalized excitations. In this work, we theoretically investigate the color-center relaxometry of two archetypal QSLs: the two-dimensional U(1) QSL with a spinon Fermi surface and the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic spin chain. The former is characterized by a metallic, spin-split ground state of mobile, interacting spinons, which closely resembles a spin-polarized Fermi liquid ground state but with neutral quasiparticles. We show that the observation of the Stoner continuum and the collective spin wave mode in the spin spectral function would provide a strong evidence for the existence of spinons and fractionalization. In one dimension, mobile spinons form a Luttinger liquid ground state. We show that the spin spectral function exhibits strong features representing the collective density and spin-wave modes, which are broadened in an algebraic fashion with an exponent characterized by the Luttinger parameter. The possibilities of measuring these collective modes and detecting the power-law decay of the spectral weight using NV relaxometry are discussed. We also examine how the transition rates are modified by marginally irrelevant operators in the Heisenberg limit.