RVB signatures in the spin dynamics of the square-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet

Abstract

We investigate the spin dynamics of the square-lattice spin- 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet by means of an improved mean-field Schwinger boson calculation. By identifying both, the long-range Neel and the RVB-like components of the ground state, we propose an educated guess for the mean-field magnetic excitation consisting on a linear combination of local and bond spin flips to compute the dynamical structure factor. Our main result is that when this magnetic excitation is optimized in such a way that the corresponding sum rule is fulfilled, we recover the low- and high-energy spectral weight features of the experimental spectrum. In particular, the anomalous spectral weight depletion at (π, 0) found in recent inelastic neutron scattering experiments can be attributed to the interference of the triplet bond excitations of the RVB component of the ground state. We conclude that the Schwinger boson theory seems to be a good candidate to adequately interpret the dynamic properties of the square-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet.