What does the continuum in the magnetic spectrum mean for quantum spin liquids?

[Grace.S]

There are so many educational podcasts out there, but which ones actually leave you with practical knowledge or skills you can apply? Looking for educational podcasts that go beyond surface-level explanations and help you understand topics deeply. Could be about history, science, language learning, or any subject that benefits from structured learning through audio.

[Stephen.M]

I just read about the new study on quantum spin liquids and I’m struggling to grasp how the quasiparticle excitations demonstrate long-range entanglement. The paper says the team observed a continuum in the magnetic spectrum, but I can’t quite connect that experimental signature to the theoretical model of a quantum spin liquid phase.

[VioletFD]

I skimmed the same paper. the continuum in the spectrum felt like lots of spin flips happening in parallel rather than a single magnon. that kind of signal seems to line up with the idea of quasiparticle excitations in a quantum spin liquid.

[DavidS]

In my own data, the broad feature showed up after cooling too slowly; we tried fitting with a magnon model and kept getting poor chi-squared; we ended up treating it as a continuum from two-spinon processes.

[Stephen.H]

I've heard long-range entanglement is not something you see directly, but the spectrum shape is supposed to reflect it indirectly.

[Gregory61]

It still gnaws at me whether disorder or phonons could fake that continuum; our samples had some impurities, and the background wasn't trivial.

[Jacob85]

One concrete thing we did was subtract lattice vibrations by measuring a nonmagnetic analog; the continuum persisted but shifted a bit.

[AvaVH]

Do you think that continuum is the right smoking gun for long-range entanglement, or could there be another mechanism?