Signatures for spinons in the quantum spin liquid candidate
Abstract
We present new experimental low-temperature heat capacity and detailed dynamical spin-structure factor data for the quantum spin-liquid candidate material . The measured heat capacity shows an almost-perfect linear temperature dependence in the range $0.1K ≲T≲ 0.5K$, reminiscent of fermionic spinon degrees of freedom. The spin-structure factor exhibits two energy regimes of strong signal which display rather different but solely diffuse scattering features. We theoretically describe these findings by an effective spinon-hopping model which crucially relies on the existence of strong ferromagnetically coupled triangles in the system. Our spinon theory is shown to naturally reproduce the overall weight distribution of the measured spin-structure factor. Particularly, we argue that various different observed characteristic properties of the spin-structure factor and the heat capacity consistently indicate the existence of a spinon Fermi surface. A closer analysis of the heat capacity at the lowest accessible temperatures hints toward the presence of weak f-wave spinon-pairing terms inducing a small partial gap along the Fermi surface (except for discrete nodal Dirac points) and suggesting an overall Z2 quantum spin-liquid scenario for .
- Authors:
-
[2];
- Freie Univ., Berlin (Germany); Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), (Germany). German Research Centre for Materials and Energy
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Goethe Univ., Frankfurt (Germany)
- Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), (Germany). German Research Centre for Materials and Energy
- National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
- Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), (Germany). German Research Centre for Materials and Energy; Technische Univ. Berlin (Germany)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1607143
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review B
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 100; Journal Issue: 17; Journal ID: ISSN 2469-9950
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Quantum spin liquid; Specific heat; Spinon; Heisenberg model; Mean field theory; Neutron scattering
Citation Formats
Sonnenschein, Jonas, Balz, Christian, Tutsch, Ulrich, Lang, Michael, Ryll, Hanjo, Rodriguez-Rivera, Jose A., Islam, A. T. M. Nazmul, Lake, Bella, and Reuther, Johannes. Signatures for spinons in the quantum spin liquid candidate Ca10Cr7O28. United States: N. p., 2019.
Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.100.174428.
Sonnenschein, Jonas, Balz, Christian, Tutsch, Ulrich, Lang, Michael, Ryll, Hanjo, Rodriguez-Rivera, Jose A., Islam, A. T. M. Nazmul, Lake, Bella, & Reuther, Johannes. Signatures for spinons in the quantum spin liquid candidate Ca10Cr7O28. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.174428
Sonnenschein, Jonas, Balz, Christian, Tutsch, Ulrich, Lang, Michael, Ryll, Hanjo, Rodriguez-Rivera, Jose A., Islam, A. T. M. Nazmul, Lake, Bella, and Reuther, Johannes. Mon .
"Signatures for spinons in the quantum spin liquid candidate Ca10Cr7O28". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.174428. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1607143.
@article{osti_1607143,
title = {Signatures for spinons in the quantum spin liquid candidate Ca10Cr7O28},
author = {Sonnenschein, Jonas and Balz, Christian and Tutsch, Ulrich and Lang, Michael and Ryll, Hanjo and Rodriguez-Rivera, Jose A. and Islam, A. T. M. Nazmul and Lake, Bella and Reuther, Johannes},
abstractNote = {We present new experimental low-temperature heat capacity and detailed dynamical spin-structure factor data for the quantum spin-liquid candidate material Ca10Cr7O28. The measured heat capacity shows an almost-perfect linear temperature dependence in the range $0.1K ≲T≲ 0.5K$, reminiscent of fermionic spinon degrees of freedom. The spin-structure factor exhibits two energy regimes of strong signal which display rather different but solely diffuse scattering features. We theoretically describe these findings by an effective spinon-hopping model which crucially relies on the existence of strong ferromagnetically coupled triangles in the system. Our spinon theory is shown to naturally reproduce the overall weight distribution of the measured spin-structure factor. Particularly, we argue that various different observed characteristic properties of the spin-structure factor and the heat capacity consistently indicate the existence of a spinon Fermi surface. A closer analysis of the heat capacity at the lowest accessible temperatures hints toward the presence of weak f-wave spinon-pairing terms inducing a small partial gap along the Fermi surface (except for discrete nodal Dirac points) and suggesting an overall Z2 quantum spin-liquid scenario for Ca10Cr7O28.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevB.100.174428},
journal = {Physical Review B},
number = 17,
volume = 100,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {11}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 3 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Spin-Glass Ground State in a Triangular-Lattice Compound
journal, February 2018
- Ma, Zhen; Wang, Jinghui; Dong, Zhao-Yang
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 120, Issue 8
Emergence of a field-driven U(1) spin liquid in the Kitaev honeycomb model
journal, January 2019
- Hickey, Ciarán; Trebst, Simon
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Thermodynamic properties of a spin-1/2 spin-liquid state in a κ-type organic salt
journal, April 2008
- Yamashita, Satoshi; Nakazawa, Yasuhiro; Oguni, Masaharu
- Nature Physics, Vol. 4, Issue 6
Excitations in the field-induced quantum spin liquid state of α-RuCl3
journal, February 2018
- Banerjee, Arnab; Lampen-Kelley, Paula; Knolle, Johannes
- npj Quantum Materials, Vol. 3, Issue 1
Finite field regime for a quantum spin liquid in
journal, August 2019
- Balz, Christian; Lampen-Kelley, Paula; Banerjee, Arnab
- Physical Review B, Vol. 100, Issue 6
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
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
Quantum orders and symmetric spin liquids
journal, April 2002
- Wen, Xiao-Gang
- Physical Review B, Vol. 65, Issue 16
Gapless chiral spin liquid in a kagome Heisenberg model
journal, August 2015
- Bieri, Samuel; Messio, Laura; Bernu, Bernard
- Physical Review B, Vol. 92, Issue 6
Correlated impurities and intrinsic spin-liquid physics in the kagome material herbertsmithite
journal, August 2016
- Han, Tian-Heng; Norman, M. R.; Wen, J. -J.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 94, Issue 6
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
Magnetic Hamiltonian and phase diagram of the quantum spin liquid
journal, May 2017
- Balz, Christian; Lake, Bella; Nazmul Islam, A. T. M.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 95, Issue 17
Quantum spin liquids in the absence of spin-rotation symmetry: Application to herbertsmithite
journal, December 2013
- Dodds, Tyler; Bhattacharjee, Subhro; Kim, Yong Baek
- Physical Review B, Vol. 88, Issue 22
Chiral Spin Liquid on a Kagome Antiferromagnet Induced by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction
journal, June 2017
- Messio, Laura; Bieri, Samuel; Lhuillier, Claire
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 26
Large- N expansion for frustrated quantum antiferromagnets
journal, April 1991
- Read, N.; Sachdev, Subir
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 66, Issue 13
Spin structure factors of chiral quantum spin liquids on the kagome lattice
journal, September 2016
- Halimeh, Jad C.; Punk, Matthias
- Physical Review B, Vol. 94, Issue 10
Crystal growth, structure and magnetic properties of Ca 10 Cr 7 O 28
journal, April 2017
- Balz, Christian; Lake, Bella; Reehuis, Manfred
- Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 29, Issue 22
Spin-liquid states on the triangular and Kagomé lattices: A projective-symmetry-group analysis of Schwinger boson states
journal, November 2006
- Wang, Fa; Vishwanath, Ashvin
- Physical Review B, Vol. 74, Issue 17
Interplay of nonsymmorphic symmetry and spin-orbit coupling in hyperkagome spin liquids: Applications to
journal, February 2017
- Huang, Biao; Kim, Yong Baek; Lu, Yuan-Ming
- Physical Review B, Vol. 95, Issue 5
gauge theory of electron fractionalization in strongly correlated systems
journal, September 2000
- Senthil, T.; Fisher, Matthew P. A.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 62, Issue 12
Fractional spinon excitations in the quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain
journal, June 2013
- Mourigal, Martin; Enderle, Mechthild; Klöpperpieper, Axel
- Nature Physics, Vol. 9, Issue 7
Statistics of holons in the quantum hard-core dimer gas
journal, January 1989
- Kivelson, Steven
- Physical Review B, Vol. 39, Issue 1
Valence Bonds in Random Quantum Magnets: Theory and Application to
journal, July 2018
- Kimchi, Itamar; Nahum, Adam; Senthil, T.
- Physical Review X, Vol. 8, Issue 3
Spin Dynamics of the Spin- Kagome Lattice Antiferromagnet
journal, March 2007
- Helton, J. S.; Matan, K.; Shores, M. P.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 98, Issue 10
Fermionic spinon and holon statistics in the pyrochlore quantum spin liquid
journal, March 2016
- Normand, B.; Nussinov, Z.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 93, Issue 11
Schwinger boson mean field theories of spin liquid states on a honeycomb lattice: Projective symmetry group analysis and critical field theory
journal, July 2010
- Wang, Fa
- Physical Review B, Vol. 82, Issue 2
Statistics of the excitations of the resonating-valence-bond state
journal, October 1989
- Read, N.; Chakraborty, B.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 40, Issue 10
Proximate Kitaev quantum spin liquid behaviour in a honeycomb magnet
journal, April 2016
- Banerjee, A.; Bridges, C. A.; Yan, J. -Q.
- Nature Materials, Vol. 15, Issue 7
Anyons in an exactly solved model and beyond
journal, January 2006
- Kitaev, Alexei
- Annals of Physics, Vol. 321, Issue 1
DAVE: A Comprehensive Software Suite for the Reduction, Visualization, and Analysis of Low Energy Neutron Spectroscopic Data
journal, November 2009
- Azuah, Richard Tumanjong; Kneller, Larry R.; Qiu, Yiming
- Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Vol. 114, Issue 6
Duality in Generalized Ising Models and Phase Transitions without Local Order Parameters
journal, October 1971
- Wegner, Franz J.
- Journal of Mathematical Physics, Vol. 12, Issue 10
Magnetic order in : A honeycomb-lattice quantum magnet with strong spin-orbit coupling
journal, April 2015
- Sears, J. A.; Songvilay, M.; Plumb, K. W.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 91, Issue 14
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
Fractionalized excitations in the partially magnetized spin liquid candidate YbMgGaO4
journal, October 2018
- Shen, Yao; Li, Yao-Dong; Walker, H. C.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Time reversal symmetry breaking chiral spin liquids: Projective symmetry group approach of bosonic mean-field theories
journal, March 2013
- Messio, Laura; Lhuillier, Claire; Misguich, Grégoire
- Physical Review B, Vol. 87, Issue 12
Variational study of triangular lattice spin- model with ring exchanges and spin liquid state in
journal, July 2005
- Motrunich, Olexei I.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 72, Issue 4
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
Short-Range Correlations in the Magnetic Ground State of
journal, December 2014
- Dally, Rebecca; Hogan, Tom; Amato, Alex
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 113, Issue 24
An introduction to lattice gauge theory and spin systems
journal, October 1979
- Kogut, John B.
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 51, Issue 4
Topological excitations and the dynamic structure factor of spin liquids on the kagome lattice
journal, March 2014
- Punk, Matthias; Chowdhury, Debanjan; Sachdev, Subir
- Nature Physics, Vol. 10, Issue 4
Mean-field theory of spin-liquid states with finite energy gap and topological orders
journal, August 1991
- Wen, X. G.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 44, Issue 6
Majorana quantization and half-integer thermal quantum Hall effect in a Kitaev spin liquid
journal, July 2018
- Kasahara, Y.; Ohnishi, T.; Mizukami, Y.
- Nature, Vol. 559, Issue 7713
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
Highly Mobile Gapless Excitations in a Two-Dimensional Candidate Quantum Spin Liquid
journal, June 2010
- Yamashita, M.; Nakata, N.; Senshu, Y.
- Science, Vol. 328, Issue 5983
Gapless spin liquid of an organic triangular compound evidenced by thermodynamic measurements
journal, April 2011
- Yamashita, Satoshi; Yamamoto, Takashi; Nakazawa, Yasuhiro
- Nature Communications, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Topological Orders in Rigid States
journal, February 1990
- Wen, X. G.
- International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol. 04, Issue 02
Majorana fermions in the Kitaev quantum spin system α-RuCl3
journal, September 2017
- Do, Seung-Hwan; Park, Sang-Youn; Yoshitake, Junki
- Nature Physics, Vol. 13, Issue 11
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
Functional integral theories of low-dimensional quantum Heisenberg models
journal, July 1988
- Arovas, Daniel P.; Auerbach, Assa
- Physical Review B, Vol. 38, Issue 1
Resonating valence bonds: A new kind of insulator?
journal, February 1973
- Anderson, P. W.
- Materials Research Bulletin, Vol. 8, Issue 2
Quantum criticality and universal scaling of a quantum antiferromagnet
journal, March 2005
- Lake, Bella; Tennant, D. Alan; Frost, Chris D.
- Nature Materials, Vol. 4, Issue 4
Spin- Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice: spin liquid with fermionic spinons
journal, June 2013
- Hao, Zhihao; Tchernyshyov, Oleg
- Physical Review B, Vol. 87, Issue 21
Electron scattering on magnetic impurities in metals and anomalous resistivity effects
journal, September 1965
- Abrikosov, A. A.
- Physics Physique Fizika, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Fermionic Spin Excitations in Two- and Three-Dimensional Antiferromagnets
journal, October 2009
- Hao, Zhihao; Tchernyshyov, Oleg
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 103, Issue 18
Weak Mott insulators on the triangular lattice: Possibility of a gapless nematic quantum spin liquid
journal, June 2010
- Grover, Tarun; Trivedi, N.; Senthil, T.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 81, Issue 24
Semiclassical theory for liquidlike behavior of the frustrated magnet
journal, March 2018
- Biswas, Sounak; Damle, Kedar
- Physical Review B, Vol. 97, Issue 11