Quantum Matter Seminar: Shi Feng
Observing Fractionalized Chiral Topology Far from Equilibrium
Event Details
- Time: 11:00am - 12:30pm
- Location: PRB 1080
- Faculty Host: Nandini Trivedi
Abstract
In strongly frustrated quantum systems, fractionalization gives rise to emergent quasiparticles carrying only part of the microscopic degrees of freedom, coupled to emergent gauge fields that govern their dynamics. In this talk, I will discuss how these gauge fields can act as an intrinsic, self-generated disordered environment for fractionalized particles, even in the absence of external quenched disorder, providing a common framework for understanding non-equilibrium dynamics in quantum simulators for spin liquids and anomalous transport in candidate materials.
A particularly useful setting arises when lattice geometry strongly constrains how the fractionalized particles respond to this emergent disorder: in a broad class of Kitaev-type spin liquids, flux-bound Majorana zero modes can form Aharonov-Bohm-cage-like compact states, allowing emergent flux disorder to coexist with robust chiral topology. This makes fractionalized chiral edge propagation accessible in quantum simulators from highly excited, short-range-entangled initial states. The same physical mechanism extends beyond the integrable limit to interacting regimes, where the emergent gauge degrees of freedom remain parametrically slow, forming a self-generated disorder landscape for lighter fractionalized fermions. This can strongly suppress energy transport without any external quenched disorder and offers a natural route toward understanding the anomalously weak transport observed in candidate gapless quantum spin liquids.
