Free coherent spinons in quantum square ice

We investigate the quantum dynamics of monopole-like excitations in quantum square ice, as captured by the strongly anisotropic spin-1/2 XXZ model on the checkerboard lattice. We obtain exact results for excitation dynamics in both analytically solvable effective models and a fully interacting model of quantum square ice on finite clusters. We find that the dispersive lower bound of the dynamic response of freely propagating spinons is recovered in the dynamic structure factor of the interacting system, yielding a marked fingerprint of coherent spinon dispersion. Our results provide unbiased evidence for the formation of coherent quasiparticles propagating freely in the correlated "vacuum" of quantum square ice.