Abstract: Magnetism is a striking example of how quantum mechanics and interactions among electrons combine to generate entirely new forms of collective behavior—phenomena that deepen our understanding of matter, as well as power modern technologies. Over the past decades, discoveries in magnetism have often heralded new paradigms in condensed matter physics, exemplified by antiferromagnetism and Mott insulators, and quantum spin liquids with their fractionalized excitations. In real materials, however, spins are inseparable from the crystalline lattices that host them. While coupling between the spins and the lattice profoundly shapes the behavior of magnetic systems, it is often overlooked or oversimplified. In this talk, I will discuss hybrid quasiparticles that arise from the entanglement of spin and lattice vibrations, and that govern macroscopic physical properties like thermal transport under magnetic field. Such hybrid excitations are expected to occur widely and, in turn, provide a powerful means not only to probe novel phenomena based on spin-phonon coupling but also to experimentally detect truly unconventional excitations from exotic spin ground states by tracking the field-tunable nature of the hybridization.
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