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Register a new userIs the Yb2Ti2O7 pyrochlore a quantum spin ice?
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We use numerical linked cluster (NLC) expansions to compute the specific heat, C(T), and entropy, S(T), of a quantum spin ice model of Yb2Ti2O7 using anisotropic exchange interactions recently determined from inelastic neutron scattering measurements and find good agreement with experimental calorimetric data. In the perturbative weak quantum regime, this model has a ferrimagnetic ordered ground state, with two peaks in C(T): a Schottky anomaly signalling the paramagnetic to spin ice crossover followed at lower temperature by a sharp peak accompanying a first order phase transition to the ferrimagnetic state. We suggest that the two C(T) features observed in Yb2Ti2O7 are associated with the same physics. Spin excitations in this regime consist of weakly confined spinon-antispinon pairs. We suggest that conventional ground state with exotic quantum dynamics will prove a prevalent characteristic of many real quantum spin ice materials.
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The thermodynamic properties of the pyrochlore Yb2Ti2O7 material are calculated using the numericallinked-cluster (NLC) calculation method for an effective anisotropic-exchange spin-1/2 Hamiltonian with parameters recently determined by fitting the neutron scattering spin wave data obtained at high magnetic field h. Magnetization, M(T,h), as a function of temperature T and for different magnetic fields h applied along the three high symmetry directions [100], [110] and [111], are compared with experimental measurements on the material for temperature T>1.8K. The excellent agreement between experimentally measured and calculated M(T,h) over the entire temperature and magnetic field range considered provides strong quantitative validation of the effective Hamiltonian. It also confirms that fitting the high-field neutron spin wave spectra in the polarized paramagnetic state is an excellent method for determining the microscopic exchange constants of rare-earth insulating magnets that are described by an effective spin-1/2 Hamiltonian. Finally, we present results which demonstrate that a recent analysis of the polarized neutron scattering intensity of Yb2Ti2O7 using a random phase approximation (RPA) method [Chang et al., Nature Communications {3}, 992 (2012)] does not provide a good description of M(T,h) for $Tlesssim 10$ K, that is in the entire temperature regime where correlations become non-negligible.
The spin ice materials, including Ho2Ti2O7 and Dy2Ti2O7, are rare earth pyrochlore magnets which, at low temperatures, enter a constrained paramagnetic state with an emergent gauge freedom. Remarkably, the spin ices provide one of very few experimentally realised examples of fractionalization because their elementary excitations can be regarded as magnetic monopoles and, over some temperature range, the spin ice materials are best described as liquids of these emergent charges. In the presence of quantum fluctuations, one can obtain, in principle, a quantum spin liquid descended from the classical spin ice state characterised by emergent photon-like excitations. Whereas in classical spin ices the excitations are akin to electrostatic charges, in the quantum spin liquid these charges interact through a dynamic and emergent electromagnetic field. In this review, we describe the latest developments in the study of such a quantum spin ice, focussing on the spin liquid phenomenology and the kinds of materials where such a phase might be found.
The Coulombic quantum spin liquid in quantum spin ice is an exotic quantum phase of matter that emerges on the pyrochlore lattice and is currently actively searched for. Motivated by recent experiments on the Yb-based breathing pyrochlore material Ba$_3$Yb$_2$Zn$_5$O$_{11}$, we theoretically study the phase diagram and magnetic properties of the relevant spin model. The latter takes the form of a quantum spin ice Hamiltonian on a breathing pyrochlore lattice, and we analyze the stability of the quantum spin liquid phase in the absence of the inversion symmetry which the lattice breaks explicitly at lattice sites. Using a gauge mean-field approach, we show that the quantum spin liquid occupies a finite region in parameter space. Moreover, there exists a direct quantum phase transition between the quantum spin liquid phase and featureless paramagnets, even though none of theses phases break any symmetry. At nonzero temperature, we show that breathing pyrochlores provide a much broader finite temperature spin liquid regime than their regular counterparts. We discuss the implications of the results for current experiments and make predictions for future experiments on breathing pyrochlores.
We investigate spin correlations in the dipolar Heisenberg antiferromagnet Gd2Sn2O7 using polarised neutron-scattering measurements in the correlated paramagnetic regime. Using Monte Carlo methods, we show that our data are sensitive to weak further-neighbour exchange interactions of magnitude ~0.5% of the nearest-neighbour interaction, and are compatible with either antiferromagnetic next-nearest neighbour interactions, or ferromagnetic third-neighbour interactions that connect spins across hexagonal loops. Calculations of the magnetic scattering intensity reveal rods of diffuse scattering along [111] reciprocal-space directions, which we explain in terms of strong antiferromagnetic correlations parallel to the set of <110> directions that connect a given spin with its nearest neighbours. Finally, we demonstrate that the spin correlations in Gd2Sn2O7 are highly anisotropic, and correlations parallel to third-neighbour separations are particularly sensitive to critical fluctuations associated with incipient long-range order.
The pyrochlore material Yb2Ti2O7 displays unexpected quasi-two-dimensional (2D) magnetic correlations within a cubic lattice environment at low temperatures, before entering an exotic disordered ground state below T=265mK. We report neutron scattering measurements of the thermal evolution of the 2D spin correlations in space and time. Short range three dimensional (3D) spin correlations develop below 400 mK, accompanied by a suppression in the quasi-elastic (QE) scattering below ~ 0.2 meV. These show a slowly fluctuating ground state with spins correlated over short distances within a kagome-triangular-kagome (KTK) stack along [111], which evolves to isolated kagome spin-stars at higher temperatures. Furthermore, low-temperature specific heat results indicate a sample dependence to the putative transition temperature that is bounded by 265mK, which we discuss in the context of recent mean field theoretical analysis.
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