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In quantum mechanics, a spinon is a quasiparticle that carries spin but no charge. In other words, it is a particle with spin 1/2 that does not interact electromagnetically. Spinons were first proposed by Lev Landau in 1932 as excitations of the Heisenberg model of magnetism. The name “spinon” was coined by Sokolov and Yurkevich in 1986.
Spinons are believed to play an important role in many exotic phenomena in solids, such as high-temperature superconductivity and the fractional quantum Hall effect. They also play a role in certain models of quantum computation.