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Title: Massless Dirac magnons in the two dimensional van der Waals honeycomb magnet CrCl 3

Abstract

Two dimensional van der Waals ferromagnets with honeycomb structures are expected to host the bosonic version of Dirac particles in their magnon excitation spectra. Using inelastic neutron scattering, we study spin wave excitations in polycrystalline CrCl3, which exhibits ferromagnetic honeycomb layers with antiferromagnetic stackings along the c-axis. For comparison, polycrystal samples of CrI3 with different grain sizes are also studied. We find that the powder-averaged spin wave spectrum of CrCl3 at T = 2 K can be adequately explained by the two dimensional spin Hamiltonian including in-plane Heisenberg exchanges only. Additionally, the observed excitation does not exhibit noticeable broadening in energy, which is in remarkable contrast to the substantial broadening observed in CrI3. Based on these results, we conclude that the ferromagnetic phase of CrCl3 hosts massless Dirac magnons and is thus not topological.

Authors:
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Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE; National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)
OSTI Identifier:
1828078
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1825339; OSTI ID: 1841474
Grant/Contract Number:  
NSF-DMR-1700081; AC05-00OR22725; SC0012311; 2020R1A5A1016518; 2020K1A3A7A09077712
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
2D Materials
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: 2D Materials Journal Volume: 9 Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2053-1583
Publisher:
IOP Publishing
Country of Publication:
United Kingdom
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; van der Waals materials; honeycomb lattice; ferromagnet; neutron scattering; magnons

Citation Formats

Chen, Lebing, Stone, Matthew B., Kolesnikov, Alexander I., Winn, Barry, Shon, Wonhyuk, Dai, Pengcheng, and Chung, Jae-Ho. Massless Dirac magnons in the two dimensional van der Waals honeycomb magnet CrCl 3. United Kingdom: N. p., 2021. Web. doi:10.1088/2053-1583/ac2e7a.
Chen, Lebing, Stone, Matthew B., Kolesnikov, Alexander I., Winn, Barry, Shon, Wonhyuk, Dai, Pengcheng, & Chung, Jae-Ho. Massless Dirac magnons in the two dimensional van der Waals honeycomb magnet CrCl 3. United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1583/ac2e7a
Chen, Lebing, Stone, Matthew B., Kolesnikov, Alexander I., Winn, Barry, Shon, Wonhyuk, Dai, Pengcheng, and Chung, Jae-Ho. Wed . "Massless Dirac magnons in the two dimensional van der Waals honeycomb magnet CrCl 3". United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1583/ac2e7a.
@article{osti_1828078,
title = {Massless Dirac magnons in the two dimensional van der Waals honeycomb magnet CrCl 3},
author = {Chen, Lebing and Stone, Matthew B. and Kolesnikov, Alexander I. and Winn, Barry and Shon, Wonhyuk and Dai, Pengcheng and Chung, Jae-Ho},
abstractNote = {Two dimensional van der Waals ferromagnets with honeycomb structures are expected to host the bosonic version of Dirac particles in their magnon excitation spectra. Using inelastic neutron scattering, we study spin wave excitations in polycrystalline CrCl3, which exhibits ferromagnetic honeycomb layers with antiferromagnetic stackings along the c-axis. For comparison, polycrystal samples of CrI3 with different grain sizes are also studied. We find that the powder-averaged spin wave spectrum of CrCl3 at T = 2 K can be adequately explained by the two dimensional spin Hamiltonian including in-plane Heisenberg exchanges only. Additionally, the observed excitation does not exhibit noticeable broadening in energy, which is in remarkable contrast to the substantial broadening observed in CrI3. Based on these results, we conclude that the ferromagnetic phase of CrCl3 hosts massless Dirac magnons and is thus not topological.},
doi = {10.1088/2053-1583/ac2e7a},
journal = {2D Materials},
number = 1,
volume = 9,
place = {United Kingdom},
year = {2021},
month = {10}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1583/ac2e7a

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