Evidence for a Field-Induced Quantum Spin Liquid in α-RuCl_{3}.
Phys Rev Lett
; 119(3): 037201, 2017 Jul 21.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28777603
ABSTRACT
We report a ^{35}Cl nuclear magnetic resonance study in the honeycomb lattice α-RuCl_{3}, a material that has been suggested to potentially realize a Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) ground state. Our results provide direct evidence that α-RuCl_{3} exhibits a magnetic-field-induced QSL. For fields larger than â¼10 T, a spin gap opens up while resonance lines remain sharp, evidencing that spins are quantum disordered and locally fluctuating. The spin gap increases linearly with an increasing magnetic field, reaching â¼50 K at 15 T, and is nearly isotropic with respect to the field direction. The unusual rapid increase of the spin gap with increasing field and its isotropic nature are incompatible with conventional magnetic ordering and, in particular, exclude that the ground state is a fully polarized ferromagnet. The presence of such a field-induced gapped QSL phase has indeed been predicted in the Kitaev model.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Language:
En
Journal:
Phys Rev Lett
Year:
2017
Document type:
Article