No Arabic abstract
Motivated by the observation of a disordered spin ground state in the $S=3/2$ material Bi$_3$Mn$_4$O$_{12}$NO$_3$, we study the ground state properties and excitation spectra of the $S=3/2$ (and for comparison $S=1/2$) bilayer Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice, with and without frustrating further neighbor interactions. We use series expansions around the Neel state to calculate properties of the magnetically ordered phase. Furthermore, series expansions in $1/lambda=J_1/J_{perp}$, where $J_1$ is an in-plane exchange constant and $J_perp$ is the exchange constant between the layers are used to study properties of the spin singlet phase. For the unfrustrated case, our results for the phase transitions are in very good agreement with recent Quantum Monte Carlo studies. We also obtain the excitation spectra in the disordered phase and study the change in the critical $lambda$ when frustrating exchange interactions are added to the $S=3/2$ system and find a rapid suppression of the ordered phase with frustration. Implications for the material Bi$_3$Mn$_4$O$_{12}$NO$_3$ are discussed.
We have explored the magnetic excitation spectrum of the S=1/2 square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet, K2V3O8 using both triple-axis and time-of-flight inelastic neutron scattering. The long-wavelength spin waves are consistent with the previously determined Hamiltonian for this material. A small energy gap of 72+/-9 micro-eV is observed at the antiferromagnetic zone center and the near-neighbor exchange constant is determined to be 1.08+/-0.03 meV. A finite ferromagnetic interplanar coupling is observed along the crystallographic c-axis with a magnitude of Jc=-0.0036+/-0.006 meV. However, upon approaching the zone boundary, the observed excitation spectrum deviates significantly from the expectation of linear spin wave theory resulting in split modes at the (pi/2,pi/2) zone boundary point. The effects of magnon-phonon interaction, orbital degrees of freedom, multimagnon scattering, and dilution/site randomness are considered in the context of the mode splitting. Unfortunately, no fully satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon is found and further theoretical and experimental work is needed.
Inelastic neutron scattering study has been performed in an S=3/2 bilayer honeycomb lattice compound Bi3Mn4O12(NO3) at ambient and high magnetic fields. Relatively broad and monotonically dispersive magnetic excitations were observed at ambient field, where no long range magnetic order exists. In the magnetic field-induced long-range ordered state at 10 T, the magnetic dispersions become slightly more intense, albeit still broad as in the disordered state, and two excitation gaps, probably originating from an easy-plane magnetic anisotropy and intrabilayer interactions, develop. Analyzing the magnetic dispersions using the linear spin-wave theory, we estimated the intraplane and intrabilayer magnetic interactions, which are almost consistent with those determined by ab initio density functional theory calculations [M. Alaei et al., Phys. Rev. B 96, 140404(R) (2017)], except the 3rd and 4th neighbor intrabilayer interactions. Most importantly, as predicted by the theory, there is no significant frustration in the honeycomb plane but frustrating intrabilayer interactions probably give rise to the disordered ground state.
Exactly solvable frustrated quantum spin models consisting of a diamond unit structure are presented. The ground states are characterized by tetramer-dimer states with a macroscopic degeneracy in a certain range of isotropic exchange interaction. The lower bound of the excitation gap is exactly calculated to be finite and the bulk entropy in the limit of zero temperature remains finite depending on the shape of the boundary of system. Residual entropy is in a range of 0~6.1% of the entropy at high temperature for hexagonal diamond lattice and 0~8.4% for square diamond lattice. These diamond lattices are generalized to any dimensions and it is likely to be synthesized experimentally.
The S=3/2 Kitaev honeycomb model (KHM) has defied an analytical as well as numerical understanding because it is not exactly soluble like its S=1/2 brethren and in contrast to other spin-S Kitaev models numerical methods are plagued by a massive pile up of low energy states. Here, we uncover the phase diagram of the S=3/2 KHM and find gapped and gapless quantum spin liquids (QSLs) generally coexisting with spin quadrupolar orders. Employing an SO(6) Majorana fermion representation of spin-3/2s, we find an exact representation of the conserved plaquette fluxes in terms of static Z$_2$ gauge fields akin to the S=1/2 KHM which enables us to treat the remaining interacting matter fermion sector in a parton mean-field theory. The latter provides an explanation for the extensive near degeneracy of low energy states in the gapless phase via the appearance of almost flat Majorana bands close to zero energy. Our parton description is in remarkable quantitative agreement with numerical simulations using the density matrix renormalization group method, and is furthermore corroborated by the addition of a single ion anisotropy which continuously connects the gapless Dirac QSL of our model with that of the S=1/2 KHM. We discuss the implications of our findings for materials realization of higher S=3/2 KHMs and the stability of the QSL phase with respect to additional interactions.
We report neutron scattering and muon spin relaxation measurements (muSR) on the pyrochlore antiferromagnet Yb2Ge2O7. Inelastic neutron scattering was used to probe the transitions between crystal electric field levels, allowing us to determine the eigenvalues and eigenvectors appropriate to the J=7/2 Yb3+ ion in this environment. The crystal electric field ground state doublet in Yb2Ge2O7 corresponds primarily to m_J = +/- 1/2 with local XY anisotropy, consistent with an S_eff = 1/2 description for the Yb moments. muSR measurements reveal the presence of an ordering transition at T_N = 0.57 K with persistent weak dynamics in the ordered state. Finally, we present neutron diffraction measurements that reveal a clear phase transition to the k = (000) Gamma_5 ground state with an ordered magnetic moment of 0.3(1) mu_B per Yb ion. We compare and contrast this phenomenology with the low temperature behavior of Yb2Ti2O7 and Er2Ti2O7, the prototypical S_eff = 1/2 XY pyrochlore magnets.