Spin excitations arising from anisotropic Dirac spinons in YCu$_3$(OD)$_6$Br$_2$[Br$_{0.33}$(OD)$_{0.67}$]

A Dirac quantum spin liquid hosts Dirac spinons, which are low-energy fractionalized neutral quasiparticles with spin 1/2 that obey the Dirac equation. Recent studies have revealed cone spin continuum in YCu$_3$(OD)$_6$Br$_2$[Br$_{x}$(OD)$_{1-x}$], consistent with the convolution of two Dirac spinons. In this work, we further studied spin excitations using the inelastic neutron scattering technique. The width of low-energy spin excitations shows a linear temperature dependence, which can be explained by spinon-spinon interactions with a Dirac dispersion. Polarized neutron scattering measurements reveal that in-plane magnetic fluctuations are about 1.5 times stronger than the out-of-plane ones, suggesting the presence of out-of-plane Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Moreover, the high-energy spin excitations around 14 meV agree with the one-pair spinon-antispinon excitations in Raman studies. The real part of the dynamical susceptibility derived from the Kramers-Kronig relationship also accords with the Knight shift measured by nuclear magnetic resonance. These results provide further insights for the possible Dirac quantum spin liquid in this system.
Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures