Hierarchy of Exchange Interactions in the Triangular-Lattice Spin Liquid
Abstract
The spin-1/2 triangular lattice antiferromagnet YbMgGaO4 has attracted attention recently as a quantum spin-liquid candidate with the possible presence of off-diagonal anisotropic exchange interactions induced by spin-orbit coupling. Whether a quantum spin liquid is stabilized or not depends on the interplay of various exchange interactions with chemical disorder that is inherent to the layered structure of the compound. We combine time-domain terahertz spectroscopy and inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the field-polarized state of YbMgGaO4 to obtain better insight of its exchange interactions. Terahertz spectroscopy in this fashion functions as a high-field electron spin resonance and probes the spin-wave excitations at the Brillouin zone center, ideally complementing neutron scattering. A global spin-wave fit to all our spectroscopic data at fields over 4 T, informed by the analysis of the terahertz spectroscopy linewidths, yields constraints on the disorder-averaged g factors and exchange interactions. Our results paint YbMgGaO4 as an easy-plane XXZ antiferromagnet with the combined and necessary presence of subleading next-nearest neighbor and weak anisotropic off-diagonal nearest-neighbor interactions. Moreover, the obtained g factors are substantially different from previous reports. Furthermore, this work establishes the hierarchy of exchange interactions in YbMgGaO4 from high-field data alone and thus strongly constrains possible mechanisms responsible formore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1458603
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1462902
- Grant/Contract Number:
- FG02-08ER46544; AC05-00OR22725
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review. X
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Physical Review. X Journal Volume: 8 Journal Issue: 3; Journal ID: ISSN 2160-3308
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
Citation Formats
Zhang, Xinshu, Mahmood, Fahad, Daum, Marcus, Dun, Zhiling, Paddison, Joseph A. M., Laurita, Nicholas J., Hong, Tao, Zhou, Haidong, Armitage, N. P., and Mourigal, Martin. Hierarchy of Exchange Interactions in the Triangular-Lattice Spin Liquid YbMgGaO 4. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031001.
Zhang, Xinshu, Mahmood, Fahad, Daum, Marcus, Dun, Zhiling, Paddison, Joseph A. M., Laurita, Nicholas J., Hong, Tao, Zhou, Haidong, Armitage, N. P., & Mourigal, Martin. Hierarchy of Exchange Interactions in the Triangular-Lattice Spin Liquid YbMgGaO 4. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031001
Zhang, Xinshu, Mahmood, Fahad, Daum, Marcus, Dun, Zhiling, Paddison, Joseph A. M., Laurita, Nicholas J., Hong, Tao, Zhou, Haidong, Armitage, N. P., and Mourigal, Martin. Mon .
"Hierarchy of Exchange Interactions in the Triangular-Lattice Spin Liquid YbMgGaO 4". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031001.
@article{osti_1458603,
title = {Hierarchy of Exchange Interactions in the Triangular-Lattice Spin Liquid YbMgGaO 4},
author = {Zhang, Xinshu and Mahmood, Fahad and Daum, Marcus and Dun, Zhiling and Paddison, Joseph A. M. and Laurita, Nicholas J. and Hong, Tao and Zhou, Haidong and Armitage, N. P. and Mourigal, Martin},
abstractNote = {The spin-1/2 triangular lattice antiferromagnet YbMgGaO4 has attracted attention recently as a quantum spin-liquid candidate with the possible presence of off-diagonal anisotropic exchange interactions induced by spin-orbit coupling. Whether a quantum spin liquid is stabilized or not depends on the interplay of various exchange interactions with chemical disorder that is inherent to the layered structure of the compound. We combine time-domain terahertz spectroscopy and inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the field-polarized state of YbMgGaO4 to obtain better insight of its exchange interactions. Terahertz spectroscopy in this fashion functions as a high-field electron spin resonance and probes the spin-wave excitations at the Brillouin zone center, ideally complementing neutron scattering. A global spin-wave fit to all our spectroscopic data at fields over 4 T, informed by the analysis of the terahertz spectroscopy linewidths, yields constraints on the disorder-averaged g factors and exchange interactions. Our results paint YbMgGaO4 as an easy-plane XXZ antiferromagnet with the combined and necessary presence of subleading next-nearest neighbor and weak anisotropic off-diagonal nearest-neighbor interactions. Moreover, the obtained g factors are substantially different from previous reports. Furthermore, this work establishes the hierarchy of exchange interactions in YbMgGaO4 from high-field data alone and thus strongly constrains possible mechanisms responsible for the observed spin-liquid phenomenology.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031001},
journal = {Physical Review. X},
number = 3,
volume = 8,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Mon Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031001
Web of Science
Works referenced in this record:
Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya Anisotropy in the Spin-1/2 Kagome Compound
journal, July 2008
- Zorko, A.; Nellutla, S.; van Tol, J.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 2
Singlet-Triplet Excitations and Long-Range Entanglement in the Spin-Orbital Liquid Candidate
journal, May 2015
- Laurita, N. J.; Deisenhofer, J.; Pan, LiDong
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 20
Electron spin resonance in antiferromagnetic chains
journal, March 2002
- Oshikawa, Masaki; Affleck, Ian
- Physical Review B, Vol. 65, Issue 13
Spinon Fermi surface spin liquid in the spin-orbit-coupled triangular-lattice Mott insulator
journal, August 2017
- Li, Yao-Dong; Lu, Yuan-Ming; Chen, Gang
- Physical Review B, Vol. 96, Issue 5
Quasiclassical magnetic order and its loss in a spin- Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a triangular lattice with competing bonds
journal, January 2015
- Li, P. H. Y.; Bishop, R. F.; Campbell, C. E.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 91, Issue 1
Physical realization of a quantum spin liquid based on a complex frustration mechanism
journal, July 2016
- Balz, Christian; Lake, Bella; Reuther, Johannes
- Nature Physics, Vol. 12, Issue 10
Hierarchy of Bound States in the One-Dimensional Ferromagnetic Ising Chain Investigated by High-Resolution Time-Domain Terahertz Spectroscopy
journal, April 2014
- Morris, C. M.; Valdés Aguilar, R.; Ghosh, A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 112, Issue 13
Quantum phase transitions in the Heisenberg triangular antiferromagnet in a magnetic field
journal, January 2017
- Ye, Mengxing; Chubukov, Andrey V.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 95, Issue 1
Quantum spin liquids: a review
journal, November 2016
- Savary, Lucile; Balents, Leon
- Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 80, Issue 1
Evidence for a spinon Fermi surface in a triangular-lattice quantum-spin-liquid candidate
journal, December 2016
- Shen, Yao; Li, Yao-Dong; Wo, Hongliang
- Nature, Vol. 540, Issue 7634
On the Anisotropy of Cubic Ferromagnetic Crystals
journal, December 1937
- van Vleck, J. H.
- Physical Review, Vol. 52, Issue 11
Order by Quenched Disorder in the Model Triangular Antiferromagnet
journal, July 2017
- Smirnov, A. I.; Soldatov, T. A.; Petrenko, O. A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 119, Issue 4
Quantum spin liquid states
journal, April 2017
- Zhou, Yi; Kanoda, Kazushi; Ng, Tai-Kai
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 89, Issue 2
Spontaneous symmetry breaking in quantum frustrated antiferromagnets
journal, April 1993
- Azaria, P.; Delamotte, B.; Mouhanna, D.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 70, Issue 16
Helical magnetism and structural anomalies in triangular lattice α-SrCr 2 O 4
journal, May 2011
- Dutton, S. E.; Climent-Pascual, E.; Stephens, P. W.
- Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 23, Issue 24
Evidence for a spinon Fermi surface in the triangular quantum spin liquid
journal, February 2017
- Fåk, B.; Bieri, S.; Canévet, E.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 95, Issue 6
Low-energy electrodynamics of novel spin excitations in the quantum spin ice Yb2Ti2O7
journal, September 2014
- Pan, LiDong; Kim, Se Kwon; Ghosh, A.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Probing Beyond Magnetic Order: Effects of Temperature and Magnetic Field
journal, February 2018
- Winter, Stephen M.; Riedl, Kira; Kaib, David
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 120, Issue 7
Magnetic and non-magnetic phases of a quantum spin liquid
journal, March 2011
- Pratt, F. L.; Baker, P. J.; Blundell, S. J.
- Nature, Vol. 471, Issue 7340
Ground-state properties of the S =1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a triangular lattice
journal, September 1990
- Jolicoeur, Th.; Dagotto, E.; Gagliano, E.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 42, Issue 7
Semiclassical ground-state phase diagram and phase of a spin-orbit-coupled model on triangular lattice
journal, November 2016
- Liu, Changle; Yu, Rong; Wang, Xiaoqun
- Physical Review B, Vol. 94, Issue 17
Quasiparticle Breakdown and Spin Hamiltonian of the Frustrated Quantum Pyrochlore in a Magnetic Field
journal, August 2017
- Thompson, J. D.; McClarty, P. A.; Prabhakaran, D.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 119, Issue 5
Spin dynamics in the geometrically frustrated multiferroic
journal, March 2010
- Poienar, M.; Damay, F.; Martin, C.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 81, Issue 10
Spin liquid nature in the Heisenberg triangular antiferromagnet
journal, April 2016
- Iqbal, Yasir; Hu, Wen-Jun; Thomale, Ronny
- Physical Review B, Vol. 93, Issue 14
Colloquium : Herbertsmithite and the search for the quantum spin liquid
journal, December 2016
- Norman, M. R.
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 88, Issue 4
Possible valence-bond condensation in the frustrated cluster magnet LiZn2Mo3O8
journal, May 2012
- Sheckelton, J. P.; Neilson, J. R.; Soltan, D. G.
- Nature Materials, Vol. 11, Issue 6
Magnetic and quantum disordered phases in triangular-lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnets
journal, October 1999
- Manuel, L. O.; Ceccatto, H. A.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 60, Issue 13
Detecting spin fractionalization in a spinon Fermi surface spin liquid
journal, August 2017
- Li, Yao-Dong; Chen, Gang
- Physical Review B, Vol. 96, Issue 7
Nearest-neighbour resonating valence bonds in YbMgGaO4
journal, June 2017
- Li, Yuesheng; Adroja, Devashibhai; Voneshen, David
- Nature Communications, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Fractional spinon excitations in the quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain
journal, June 2013
- Mourigal, Martin; Enderle, Mechthild; Klöpperpieper, Axel
- Nature Physics, Vol. 9, Issue 7
Three-sublattice order in triangular- and Kagomé-lattice spin-half antiferromagnets
journal, March 1992
- Singh, Rajiv R. P.; Huse, David A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 68, Issue 11
The Resonating Valence Bond State in La2CuO4 and Superconductivity
journal, March 1987
- Anderson, P. W.
- Science, Vol. 235, Issue 4793
An End to the Drought of Quantum Spin Liquids
journal, September 2008
- Lee, P. A.
- Science, Vol. 321, Issue 5894
The new cold neutron chopper spectrometer at the Spallation Neutron Source: Design and performance
journal, August 2011
- Ehlers, G.; Podlesnyak, A. A.; Niedziela, J. L.
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 82, Issue 8
Effect of the pseudodipolar interaction on critical spin dynamics in cubic ferromagnets
journal, December 1983
- Huber, D. L.
- Solid State Communications, Vol. 48, Issue 9
Static and Dynamical Properties of the Spin- Equilateral Triangular-Lattice Antiferromagnet
journal, February 2016
- Ma, J.; Kamiya, Y.; Hong, Tao
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 8
Topography of Spin Liquids on a Triangular Lattice
journal, May 2018
- Zhu, Zhenyue; Maksimov, P. A.; White, Steven R.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 120, Issue 20
Modes of Magnetic Resonance in the Spin-Liquid Phase of
journal, July 2011
- Povarov, K. Yu.; Smirnov, A. I.; Starykh, O. A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 3
Disorder-Induced Quantum Spin Liquid in Spin Ice Pyrochlores
journal, February 2017
- Savary, Lucile; Balents, Leon
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 8
Spin Disorder on a Triangular Lattice
journal, September 2005
- Nakatsuji, S.
- Science, Vol. 309, Issue 5741
A General Theory of Magnetic Resonance Absorption
journal, November 1954
- Kubo, Ryogo; Tomita, Kazuhisa
- Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, Vol. 9, Issue 6
Magnetization Process and Collective Excitations in the Triangular-Lattice Heisenberg Antiferromagnet
journal, June 2013
- Susuki, Takuya; Kurita, Nobuyuki; Tanaka, Takuya
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 110, Issue 26
Effect of spin-orbit coupling on the effective-spin correlation in
journal, March 2018
- Li, Yao-Dong; Shen, Yao; Li, Yuesheng
- Physical Review B, Vol. 97, Issue 12
Disorder-Induced Mimicry of a Spin Liquid in
journal, October 2017
- Zhu, Zhenyue; Maksimov, P. A.; White, Steven R.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 119, Issue 15
Anisotropic spin model of strong spin-orbit-coupled triangular antiferromagnets
journal, July 2016
- Li, Yao-Dong; Wang, Xiaoqun; Chen, Gang
- Physical Review B, Vol. 94, Issue 3
Do quantum spin liquids exist?
journal, August 2016
- Imai, Takashi; Lee, Young S.
- Physics Today, Vol. 69, Issue 8
Neutron scattering in the proximate quantum spin liquid α-RuCl 3
journal, June 2017
- Banerjee, Arnab; Yan, Jiaqiang; Knolle, Johannes
- Science, Vol. 356, Issue 6342
A measure of monopole inertia in the quantum spin ice Yb2Ti2O7
journal, December 2015
- Pan, LiDong; Laurita, N. J.; Ross, Kate A.
- Nature Physics, Vol. 12, Issue 4
Measurement of the spin-excitation continuum in one-dimensional using neutron scattering
journal, November 1995
- Tennant, D. Alan; Cowley, Roger A.; Nagler, Stephen E.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 52, Issue 18
Quantum Excitations in Quantum Spin Ice
journal, October 2011
- Ross, Kate A.; Savary, Lucile; Gaulin, Bruce D.
- Physical Review X, Vol. 1, Issue 2
Gapless quantum spin liquid ground state in the two-dimensional spin-1/2 triangular antiferromagnet YbMgGaO4
journal, November 2015
- Li, Yuesheng; Liao, Haijun; Zhang, Zhen
- Scientific Reports, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Magnetic Soft Modes in the Distorted Triangular Antiferromagnet
journal, September 2012
- Toth, S.; Lake, B.; Hradil, K.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 12
Antisymmetric Exchange and Exchange-Narrowed Electron-Paramagnetic-Resonance Linewidths
journal, July 1971
- Castner, T. G.; Seehra, Mohindar S.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 4, Issue 1
Constraints on Jones transmission matrices from time-reversal invariance and discrete spatial symmetries
journal, July 2014
- Armitage, N. P.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 90, Issue 3
Mott Physics in Organic Conductors with Triangular Lattices
journal, March 2011
- Kanoda, Kazushi; Kato, Reizo
- Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Extended Quantum Critical Phase in a Magnetized Spin- Antiferromagnetic Chain
journal, July 2003
- Stone, M. B.; Reich, D. H.; Broholm, C.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 91, Issue 3
Continuous excitations of the triangular-lattice quantum spin liquid YbMgGaO4
journal, December 2016
- Paddison, Joseph A. M.; Daum, Marcus; Dun, Zhiling
- Nature Physics, Vol. 13, Issue 2
Rare-Earth Triangular Lattice Spin Liquid: A Single-Crystal Study of
journal, October 2015
- Li, Yuesheng; Chen, Gang; Tong, Wei
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 16
Entanglement entropy as a portal to the physics of quantum spin liquids
journal, February 2013
- Grover, Tarun; Zhang, Yi; Vishwanath, Ashvin
- New Journal of Physics, Vol. 15, Issue 2
Spin liquid phase of the Heisenberg model on the triangular lattice
journal, July 2015
- Zhu, Zhenyue; White, Steven R.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 92, Issue 4
Spinon Magnetic Resonance of Quantum Spin Liquids
journal, January 2018
- Luo, Zhu-Xi; Lake, Ethan; Mei, Jia-Wei
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 120, Issue 3
Quantum fluctuations in the effective pseudospin- model for magnetic pyrochlore oxides
journal, March 2011
- Onoda, Shigeki; Tanaka, Yoichi
- Physical Review B, Vol. 83, Issue 9
Quantum Criticality in an Ising Chain: Experimental Evidence for Emergent E 8 Symmetry
journal, January 2010
- Coldea, R.; Tennant, D. A.; Wheeler, E. M.
- Science, Vol. 327, Issue 5962
String-net condensation: A physical mechanism for topological phases
journal, January 2005
- Levin, Michael A.; Wen, Xiao-Gang
- Physical Review B, Vol. 71, Issue 4
Ground-state phase diagram of an anisotropic spin- model on the triangular lattice
journal, April 2017
- Luo, Qiang; Hu, Shijie; Xi, Bin
- Physical Review B, Vol. 95, Issue 16
Fractionalized excitations in the spin-liquid state of a kagome-lattice antiferromagnet
journal, December 2012
- Han, Tian-Heng; Helton, Joel S.; Chu, Shaoyan
- Nature, Vol. 492, Issue 7429
ESR study of the spin ladder with uniform Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
journal, November 2015
- Glazkov, V. N.; Fayzullin, M.; Krasnikova, Yu.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 92, Issue 18
Long-Range Néel Order in the Triangular Heisenberg Model
journal, May 1999
- Capriotti, Luca; Trumper, Adolfo E.; Sorella, Sandro
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 82, Issue 19
Resonating valence bonds: A new kind of insulator?
journal, February 1973
- Anderson, P. W.
- Materials Research Bulletin, Vol. 8, Issue 2
Theory of a Competitive Spin Liquid State for Weak Mott Insulators on the Triangular Lattice
journal, October 2013
- Mishmash, Ryan V.; Garrison, James R.; Bieri, Samuel
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 15
Spin-liquid phase of the multiple-spin exchange Hamiltonian on the triangular lattice
journal, July 1999
- Misguich, G.; Lhuillier, C.; Bernu, B.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 60, Issue 2
Finite-temperature behavior of a classical spin-orbit-coupled model for with and without bond disorder
journal, May 2018
- Parker, Edward; Balents, Leon
- Physical Review B, Vol. 97, Issue 18
Absence of Magnetic Thermal Conductivity in the Quantum Spin-Liquid Candidate
journal, December 2016
- Xu, Y.; Zhang, J.; Li, Y. S.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 117, Issue 26
Experimental Realization of a 2D Fractional Quantum Spin Liquid
journal, February 2001
- Coldea, R.; Tennant, D. A.; Tsvelik, A. M.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 86, Issue 7
Disordered Route to the Coulomb Quantum Spin Liquid: Random Transverse Fields on Spin Ice in
journal, March 2017
- Wen, J. -J.; Koohpayeh, S. M.; Ross, K. A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 10
Muon Spin Relaxation Evidence for the U(1) Quantum Spin-Liquid Ground State in the Triangular Antiferromagnet
journal, August 2016
- Li, Yuesheng; Adroja, Devashibhai; Biswas, Pabitra K.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 117, Issue 9
Unusual ordered phases of highly frustrated magnets: a review
journal, April 2015
- Starykh, Oleg A.
- Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 78, Issue 5
Spin Liquid State in an Organic Mott Insulator with a Triangular Lattice
journal, September 2003
- Shimizu, Y.; Miyagawa, K.; Kanoda, K.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 91, Issue 10
Crystalline Electric-Field Randomness in the Triangular Lattice Spin-Liquid
journal, March 2017
- Li, Yuesheng; Adroja, Devashibhai; Bewley, Robert I.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 10