The Kondo effect in bosonic spin liquids

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Abstract
In a metal, a magnetic impurity is fully screened by the conduction electrons at low temperature. In contrast, impurity moments coupled to spin-1 bulk bosons, such as triplet excitations in paramagnets, are only partially screened, even at a bulk quantum critical point. We argue that this difference is not due to the quantum statistics of the host particles but instead related to the structure of the impurity--host coupling, by demonstrating that frustrated magnets with bosonic spinon excitations can display a bosonic version of the Kondo effect. However, the Bose statistics of the bulk implies distinct behavior, such as a weak-coupling phase transition, and perfect screening for a range of impurity spin values. We discuss implications of our results for the compound Cs$_2$CuCl$_4$, as well as possible extensions to multicomponent bosonic gases.

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