Chiral spin-liquid-like state in pyrochlore iridate thin films
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- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ (United States)
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Fudan University, Shanghai (China)
- Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ (United States)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China); University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
- Boston University, MA (United States)
The pyrochlore iridates have become ideal platforms to unravel fascinating correlated and topological phenomena that stem from the intricate interplay among strong spin-orbit coupling, electronic correlations, lattice with geometric frustration, and itinerancy of the 5d electrons. The all-in-all-out antiferromagnetic state, commonly considered as the magnetic ground state, can be dramatically altered in reduced dimensionality, leading to exotic or hidden quantum states inaccessible in bulk. Here, by means of magnetotransport, resonant elastic and inelastic x-ray scattering experiments, we discover an emergent quantum disordered state in (111) Y2Ir2O7 thin films (thickness ≤30 nm) persisting down to 5 K, characterized by dispersionless magnetic excitations. The anomalous Hall effect observed below an onset temperature near 125 K corroborates the presence of chiral short-range spin configurations expressed in non-zero scalar spin chirality, breaking the macroscopic time-reversal symmetry. The origin of this chiral state is ascribed to the restoration of magnetic frustration on the pyrochlore lattice in lower dimensionality, where the competing exchange interactions together with enhanced quantum fluctuations suppress any long-range order and trigger spin-liquid-like behavior with degenerate ground-state manifold.
- Research Organization:
- Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities (SUF); National Key R&D Program of China; National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0022160; SC0021305; AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 2481276
- Journal Information:
- Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 15; ISSN 2041-1723
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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