Samarium hexaboride (SmB$_6$) is the first strongly correlated material with a recognized non-trivial band-structure topology. Its electron correlations are seen by inelastic neutron scattering as a coherent collective excitation at the energy of 14
meV. Here we calculate the spectrum of this mode using a perturbative slave boson method. Our starting point is the recently constructed Anderson model that properly captures the band-structure topology of SmB$_6$. Most self-consistent renormalization effects are captured by a few phenomenological parameters whose values are fitted to match the calculated and experimentally measured mode spectrum in the first Brillouin zone. A simple band-structure of low-energy quasiparticles in SmB$_6$ is also modeled through this fitting procedure, because the important renormalization effects due to Coulomb interactions are hard to calculate by ab-initio methods. Despite involving uncontrolled approximations, the slave boson calculation is capable of producing a fairly good quantitative match of the energy spectrum, and a qualitative match of the spectral weight throughout the first Brillouin zone. We find that the fitted band-structure required for this match indeed puts SmB$_6$ in the class of strong topological insulators. Our analysis thus provides a detailed physical picture of how the SmB$_6$ band topology arises from strong electron interactions, and paints the collective mode as magnetically active exciton.
Using inelastic neutron scattering, we map a 14 meV coherent resonant mode in the topological Kondo insulator SmB6 and describe its relation to the low energy insulating band structure. The resonant intensity is confined to the X and R high symmetry
points, repeating outside the first Brillouin zone and dispersing less than 2 meV, with a 5d-like magnetic form factor. We present a slave-boson treatment of the Anderson Hamiltonian with a third neighbor dominated hybridized band structure. This approach produces a spin exciton below the charge gap with features that are consistent with the observed neutron scattering. We find that maxima in the wave vector dependence of the inelastic neutron scattering indicate band inversion.
Inelastic neutron scattering for temperatures below 30 K from a powder of LiZn2Mo3O8 demonstrates this triangular-lattice antiferromagnet hosts collective magnetic excitations from spin 1/2 Mo3O13 molecules. Apparently gapless (Delta < 0.2 meV) and e
xtending at least up to 2.5 meV, the low energy magnetic scattering cross section is surprisingly broad in momentum space and involves one third of the spins present above 100 K. The data are compatible with the presence of valence-bonds involving nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor spins forming a disordered or dynamic state.
We study high-field magnon dynamics and examine the dynamical structure factor in the quasi-2D tetragonal Heisenberg antiferromagnet with interlayer coupling corresponding to realistic materials. Within spin-wave theory, we show that a non-zero inter
layer coupling mitigates singular corrections to the excitation spectrum occurring in the high-field regime that would otherwise require a self-consistent approach beyond the 1/S approximation. For the fields between the threshold for decays and saturation field we observe widening of the two-magnon sidebands with significant shifting of the spectral weight away from the quasiparticle peak. We find spectrum broadening throughout large regions of the Brillouin zone, dramatic redistributions of spectral weight to the two-magnon continuum, two-peak structures and other features clearly unlike conventional single-particle peaks.
