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Universal Bound States in Long-range Spin Chains with an Impurity

Quantum Physics 2026-04-29 v1 Quantum Gases Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Understanding how quasi-particles interact with impurities is crucial for unveiling novel properties of quantum many-body systems. A prominent example is the enhanced scattering between electrons and magnetic impurities in the low-energy limit, which gives rise to the Kondo effect. In this letter, motivated by recent developments in quantum simulation platforms, we investigate the universal behavior of long-range quantum spin chains with a single local impurity, focusing on systems that conserve the magnon number. Using effective field theory, we show that distinct classes of universal three-magnon states can emerge when the impurity-mediated two-magnon interaction is on resonance. When the long-range coupling decays as 1/rα1/r^\alpha, we find that (i) for α(2,2.89)\alpha\in (2,2.89), the system exhibits Efimov effects, with the three-body binding energy forming a geometric series lnE3-body(n)n(α1)π/s0(α)\ln|E^{(n)}_{\text{3-body}}|\sim-n (\alpha-1) \pi/s_0(\alpha), (ii) for α=2\alpha=2, the system shows semi-super Efimov effects with lnE3-body(n)(nπθ)2/8\ln|E^{(n)}_{\text{3-body}}|\sim-(n\pi-\theta)^2/8. Our theoretical prediction is validated by the numerical solution of the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equation. Our results could be tested experimentally in the future on quantum simulation platforms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.04993,
  title  = {Universal Bound States in Long-range Spin Chains with an Impurity},
  author = {Ning Sun and Lei Feng and Pengfei Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.04993},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:49:29.094Z