No Arabic abstract
The low energy spin excitation spectrum of the breathing pyrochlore Ba3Yb2Zn5O11 has been investigated with inelastic neutron scattering. Several nearly resolution limited modes with no observable dispersion are observed at 250 mK while, at elevated temperatures, transitions between excited levels become visible. To gain deeper insight, a theoretical model of isolated Yb3+ tetrahedra parametrized by four anisotropic exchange constants is constructed. The model reproduces the inelastic neutron scattering data, specific heat, and magnetic susceptibility with high fidelity. The fitted exchange parameters reveal a Heisenberg antiferromagnet with a very large Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Using this model, we predict the appearance of an unusual octupolar paramagnet at low temperatures and speculate on the development of inter-tetrahedron correlations.
Inelastic neutron scattering measurement is performed on a breathing pyrochlore antiferromagnet Ba3Yb2Zn5O11. The observed dispersionless excitations are explained by a crystalline electric field (CEF) Hamiltonian of Kramers ion Yb3+ of which the local symmetry exhibits C3v point group symmetry. The magnetic susceptibility previously reported is consistently reproduced by the energy scheme of the CEF excitations. The obtained wave functions of the ground state Kramers doublet exhibit the planer-type anisotropy. The result demonstrates that Ba3Yb2Zn5O11 is an experimental realization of breathing pyrochlore antiferromagnet with a pseudospin S = 1/2 having easy-plane anisotropy.
The hierarchy of the coupling strengths in a physical system often engenders an effective model at low energies where the decoupled high-energy modes are integrated out. Here, using neutron scattering, we show that the spin excitations in the breathing pyrochlore lattice compound CuInCr$_4$S$_8$ are hierarchical and can be approximated by an effective model of correlated tetrahedra at low energies. At higher energies, intra-tetrahedron excitations together with strong magnon-phonon couplings are observed, which suggests the possible role of the lattice degree of freedom in stabilizing the spin tetrahedra. Our work illustrates the spin dynamics in CuInCr$_4$S$_8$ and demonstrates a general effective-cluster approach to understand the dynamics on the breathing-type lattices.
Fractonic phases of matter are novel quantum ground states supporting sub-dimensional emergent excitations with mobility restrictions and/or immobile fractons. The ground state degeneracy of such phases is sub-extensive and depends on the geometry of the underlying lattice. Due to these unusual properties, fractonic phases are considered as models for quantum memory or as examples of quantum glassy behaviors. While there exist a number of exactly solvable models with interactions between multiple particles/spins (twelve or more), the realization of such models in real materials is extremely challenging. In this work, we provide a realistic quantum model of quadratic spin interactions on the breathing pyrochlore lattice, inspired by a classical spin model studied earlier. We show that the emergent excitations in this model are immobile when they are present alone. They can only move as a cluster or when they reside at the corners of a membrane excitation. Using the membrane operators acting on the ground state manifold, we construct degenerate ground states with periodic boundary conditions. It is shown that the ground state degeneracy explicitly depends on the lattice geometry. We discuss the implications of these results in light of the rank-2 tensor gauge theory.
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 present a comprehensive neutron scattering study of the breathing pyrochlore magnet LiGaCr4S8. We observe an unconventional magnetic excitation spectrum with a separation of high and low-energy spin dynamics in the correlated paramagnetic regime above a spin-freezing transition at 12(2) K. By fitting to magnetic diffuse-scattering data, we parameterize the spin Hamiltonian. We find that interactions are ferromagnetic within the large and small tetrahedra of the breathing pyrochlore lattice, but antiferromagnetic further-neighbor interactions are also essential to explain our data, in qualitative agreement with density-functional theory predictions [Ghoshet al.,npj Quantum Mater.4, 63 (2019)]. We explain the origin of geometrical frustration in LiGaCr4S8 interms of net antiferromagnetic coupling between emergent tetrahedral spin clusters that occupy a face-centered lattice. Our results provide insight into the emergence of frustration in the presence of strong further-neighbor couplings, and a blueprint for the determination of magnetic interactions in classical spin liquids.