We investigated the dispersion of nuclear spin waves in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$ by using neutron spin-echo spectroscopy at millikelvin temperatures. Our results show unambiguously the existence of dispersion of nuclear spin waves in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$ at T = 30 mK. A fit of the dispersion data with the spin wave dispersion formula gave the Suhl-Nakamura interaction range to be of the order of 10 {AA}.
We have investigated low energy nuclear spin excitations in strongly correlated electron compound HoCrO$_3$. We observe clear inelastic peaks at $E = 22.18 pm 0.04$ $mu eV$ in both energy loss and gain sides. The energy of the inelastic peaks remains constant in the temperature range 1.5 - 40 K at which they are observed. The intensity of the inelastic peak increases at first with increasing temperature and then decreases at higher temperatures. The temperature dependence of the energy and intensity of the inelastic peaks is very unusual compared to that observed in other Nd, Co and V compounds. Huge quasielastic scattering appears at higher temperatures presumably due to the fluctuating electronic moments of the Ho ions that get increasingly disordered at higher temperatures.
The dynamics of S=1/2 quantum spins on a 2D square lattice lie at the heart of the mystery of the cuprates cite{Hayden2004,Vignolle2007,Li2010,LeTacon2011,Coldea2001,Headings2010,Braicovich2010}. In bulk cuprates such as LCO{}, the presence of a weak interlayer coupling stabilizes 3D N{e}el order up to high temperatures. In a truly 2D system however, thermal spin fluctuations melt long range order at any finite temperature cite{Mermin1966}. Further, quantum spin fluctuations transfer magnetic spectral weight out of a well-defined magnon excitation into a magnetic continuum, the nature of which remains controversial cite{Sandvik2001,Ho2001,Christensen2007,Headings2010}. Here, we measure the spin response of emph{isolated one-unit-cell thick layers} of LCO{}. We show that coherent magnons persist even in a single layer of LCO{} despite the loss of magnetic order, with no evidence for resonating valence bond (RVB)-like spin correlations cite{Anderson1987,Hsu1990,Christensen2007}. Thus these excitations are well described by linear spin wave theory (LSWT). We also observe a high-energy magnetic continuum in the isotropic magnetic response. This high-energy continuum is not well described by 2 magnon LSWT, or indeed any existing theories.
We have investigated the ferromagnetic phase transition of elemental Co by high-resolution neutron backscattering spectroscopy. We monitored the splitting of the nuclear levels by the hyperfine field at the Co nucleus. The energy of this hyperfine splitting is identified as the order parameter of the ferromagnetic phase transition. By measuring the temperature dependence of the energy we determined the critical exponent $beta = 0.350 pm 0.002$ and the ferromagnetic Curie temperature of $T_{text{C}} = 1400$~K. The present result of the critical exponent agrees better with the predicted value (0.367) of the 3-dimensional Heisenberg model than that determined previously by NMR.
Studying the prototypical ferromagnetic superconductor UGe$_2$ we demonstrate the potential of the Modulated IntEnsity by Zero Effort (MIEZE) technique---a novel neutron spectroscopy method with ultra-high energy resolution of at least 1~$mu$eV---for the study of quantum matter. We reveal purely longitudinal spin fluctuations in UGe$_2$ with a dual nature arising from $5f$ electrons that are hybridized with the conduction electrons. Local spin fluctuations are perfectly described by the Ising universality class in three dimensions, whereas itinerant spin fluctuations occur over length scales comparable to the superconducting coherence length, showing that MIEZE is able to spectroscopically disentangle the complex low-energy behavior characteristic of quantum materials.
The heat carriers responsible for the unexpectedly large thermal Hall conductivity of the cuprate Mott insulator La$_2$CuO$_4$ were recently shown to be phonons. However, the mechanism by which phonons in cuprates acquire chirality in a magnetic field is still unknown. Here, we report a similar thermal Hall conductivity in two cuprate Mott insulators with significantly different crystal structures and magnetic orders - Nd$_2$CuO$_4$ and Sr$_2$CuO$_2$Cl$_2$ - and show that two potential mechanisms can be excluded - the scattering of phonons by rare-earth impurities and by structural domains. Our comparative study further reveals that orthorhombicity, apical oxygens, the tilting of oxygen octahedra and the canting of spins out of the CuO$_2$ planes are not essential to the mechanism of chirality. Our findings point to a chiral mechanism coming from a coupling of acoustic phonons to the intrinsic excitations of the CuO$_2$ planes.