Spin-charge separation

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In condensed matter physics, the spin-charge separation is an unusual behavior of electrons in some materials under some special conditions that allows the electrons to behave as a bound state of two independent particles, the spinon and the chargon, also known as the holon. The spinon only carries the spin of the electron but not the charge while the chargon/holon has spin equal to zero but its electric charge equals to the charge of the electron. Spin-charge separation is one of the most unusual manifestations of the concept of quasiparticles.

This is really surprising because the "bare" quasiparticles are electrons, holes, phonons and photons, and all of them have the property that bosons are evenly charged and fermions are oddly charged and naively, one would think that any quasiparticle formed from these particles would also satisfy this property.

In any finite material, the total number of spinons plus chargons has to be even.

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• Observation of Spin-Charge Separation in One-Dimensional SrCuO₂
• First Direct Observations of Spinons and Holons
• Distinct spinon and holon dispersions in photoemission spectral functions from one-dimensional SrCuO2 : Abstract