Resonating Valence Bond Wave Function for the Two-Dimensional Fractional Spin Liquid

The unconventional low-lying spin excitations, recently observed in neutron scattering experiments on Cs₂CuCl₄, are explained with a spin liquid wave function. The dispersion relation as well as the wave vector of the incommensurate spin correlations are well reproduced within a projected BCS wave function with gapless and fractionalized spin-1/2 excitations around the nodes of the BCS gap function. The proposed wave function is shown to be very accurate for one-dimensional spin-1/2 systems and remains similarly accurate in the two-dimensional model corresponding to Cs₂CuCl₄, thus representing a good ansatz for describing spin fractionalization in two dimensions.