No Arabic abstract
We combine two aspects of magnetic frustration, multiferroicity and emergent quasi-particles in spin liquids, by studying magneto-electric monopoles. Spin ice offers to couple these emergent topological defects to external fields, and to each other, in unusual ways, making possible to lift the degeneracy underpinning the spin liquid and to potentially stabilize novel forms of charge crystals, opening the path to a magnetic crystallography. In developing the general phase diagram including nearest-neighbour coupling, Zeeman energy, electric and magnetic dipolar interactions, we uncover the emergence of a bi-layered crystal of singly-charged monopoles, whose stability, remarkably, is strengthened by an external [110] magnetic field. Our theory is able to account for the ordering process of Tb2Ti2O7 in large field for reasonably small electric energy scales.
Dielectric spectroscopy is used to check for the onset of polar order in the quasi one-dimensional quantum spin system Sul-Cu2Cl4 when passing from the spin-liquid state into the ordered spiral phase in an external magnetic field. We find clear evidence for multiferroicity in this material and treat in detail its H-T phase diagram close to the quantum-critical regime.
The influence of the homogeneous magnetic field on a single mobile hole in a magnetic insulator, as represented by the two-dimensional t-J model, is investigated by considering the coupling of the field to the orbital current. The energy of the J=0 system is analysed via the high-temperature expansion and the small system diagonalization. The susceptibility is shown to be diamagnetic and diverging at low temperatures T. In contrast, in the antiferrmagnetic J>0 case small systems generically reveal a tendency towards a paramagnetic response in larger fields at low T. By employing at T=0 the cumulant expansion we study the ground state in arbitrary B, showing a behavior very sensitive to the character of the quasiparticle dispersion and the magnetic-field strength. At low B the perturbation and small-systems results are consistent with a pronounced diamagnetic susceptibility at T->0, but indicate on a suppressed contribution at intermediate T~J.
Fractionalised excitations that emerge from a many body system have revealed rich physics and concepts, from composite fermions in two-dimensional electron systems, revealed through the fractional quantum Hall effect, to spinons in antiferromagnetic chains and, more recently, fractionalisation of Dirac electrons in graphene and magnetic monopoles in spin ice. Even more surprising is the fragmentation of the degrees of freedom themselves, leading to coexisting and a priori independent ground states. This puzzling phenomenon was recently put forward in the context of spin ice, in which the magnetic moment field can fragment, resulting in a dual ground state consisting of a fluctuating spin liquid, a so-called Coulomb phase, on top of a magnetic monopole crystal. Here we show, by means of neutron scattering measurements, that such fragmentation occurs in the spin ice candidate Nd$_2$Zr$_2$O$_7$. We observe the spectacular coexistence of an antiferromagnetic order induced by the monopole crystallisation and a fluctuating state with ferromagnetic correlations. Experimentally, this fragmentation manifests itself via the superposition of magnetic Bragg peaks, characteristic of the ordered phase, and a pinch point pattern, characteristic of the Coulomb phase. These results highlight the relevance of the fragmentation concept to describe the physics of systems that are simultaneously ordered and fluctuating.
High resolution time-of-flight neutron scattering measurements on Tb2Ti2O7 reveal a rich low temperature phase diagram in the presence of a magnetic field applied along [110]. In zero field at T=0.4 K, terbium titanate is a highly correlated cooperative paramagnet with disordered spins residing on a pyrochlore lattice of corner-sharing tetrahedra. Application of a small field condenses much of the magnetic diffuse scattering, characteristic of the disordered spins, into a new Bragg peak characteristic of a polarized paramagnet. At higher fields, a magnetically ordered phase is induced, which supports spin wave excitations indicative of continuous, rather than Ising-like spin degrees of freedom.
We have studied the spin correlations with $bf{k}$= ($frac12$, $frac12$, $frac12$) propagation vector which appear below 0.4, K in tbti spin liquid by combining powder neutron diffraction and specific heat on Tb$_{2+x}$Ti$_{2-x}$O$_{7+y}$ samples with $x$=0, 0.01, -0.01. The $bf{k}$= ($frac12$, $frac12$, $frac12$) order clearly appears on all neutron patterns by subtracting a pattern at 1.2(1),K. Refining the subtracted patterns at 0.07,K yields two possible spin structures, with spin-ice-like and monopole-like correlations respectively. Mesoscopic correlations involve Tb moments of 1 to 2 mub ordered on a length scale of about 20 AA. In addition, long range order involving a small spin component of 0.1 to 0.2 mub is detected for the $x$= 0 and 0.01 samples showing a peak in the specific heat. Comparison with previous single crystals data suggests that the ($frac12$, $frac12$, $frac12$) order settles in through nanometric spin textures with dominant spin ice character and correlated orientations, analogous to nanomagnetic twins.