No Arabic abstract
In the dense metal-organic framework Na[Mn(HCOO)$_3$], Mn$^{2+}$ ions ($S=frac{5}{2}$) occupy the nodes of a `trillium hyperkagome net. We show that this material exhibits a variety of behaviour characteristic of geometric frustration: the Neel transition is suppressed well below the characteristic magnetic interaction strength; short-range magnetic order persists far above the Neel temperature; and the magnetic susceptibility exhibits a pseudo-plateau at $frac{1}{3}$-saturation magnetisation. We demonstrate that a simple nearest-neighbour Heisenberg antiferromagnet model accounts quantitatively for each observation, and hence Na[Mn(HCOO)$_3$] is the first experimental realisation of this model on the trillium net. We develop a mapping between this trillium model and that on the two-dimensional Shastry-Sutherland lattice, and demonstrate how both link geometric frustration within the classical spin liquid regime to a strong magnetocaloric response at low fields.
The realization of magnetic frustration in a metallic van der Waals (vdW) coupled material has been sought as a promising platform to explore novel phenomena both in bulk matter and in exfoliated devices. However, a suitable material platform has been lacking so far. Here, we demonstrate that CeSiI hosts itinerant electrons coexisting with exotic magnetism. In CeSiI, the magnetic cerium atoms form a triangular bilayer structure sandwiched by van der Waals stacked iodine layers. From resistivity and magnetometry measurements, we confirm the coexistence of itinerant electrons with magnetism with dominant antiferromagnetic exchange between the strongly Ising-like Ce moments below 7 K. Neutron diffraction directly confirms magnetic order with an incommensurate propagation vector k ~ (0.28, 0, 0.19) at 1.6 K, which points to the importance of further neighbor magnetic interactions in this system. The presence of a two-step magnetic-field-induced phase transition along c axis further suggests magnetic frustration in the ground state. Our findings provide a novel material platform hosting a coexistence of itinerant electron and frustrated magnetism in a vdW system, where exotic phenomena arising from rich interplay between spin, charge and lattice in low dimension can be explored.
We examine the presence and evolution of magnetic Dirac nodes in the Heisenberg honeycomb lattice. Using linear spin theory, we evaluate the collinear phase diagram as well as the change in the spin dynamics with various exchange interactions. We show that the ferromagnetic structure produces bosonic Dirac and Weyl points due to the competition between superexchange interactions. Furthermore, it is shown that the criteria for magnetic Dirac nodes are coupled to the magnetic structure and not the overall crystal symmetry, where the breaking of inversion symmetry greatly affects the antiferromagnetic configurations. The tunability of the nodal points through variation of the exchange parameters leads to the possibility of controlling Dirac symmetries through an external manipulation of the orbital interactions.
The rich physics manifested by 5d oxides falls outside the Mott-Hubbard paradigm used to successfully explain the electronic and magnetic properties of 3d oxides. Much consideration has been given to the extent to which strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC), in the limit of increased bandwidth and reduced electron correlation, drives the formation of novel electronic states, as manifested through the existence of metal-insulator transitions (MITs). SOC is believed to play a dominant role in 5d5 systems such as iridates (Ir4+), undergoing MITs which may or may not be intimately connected to magnetic order, with pyrochlore and perovksite systems being examples of the former and latter, respectively. However, the role of SOC for other 5d configurations is less clear. For example, 5d3 (e.g Os5+) systems are expected to have an orbital singlet and consequently a reduced effect of SOC in the groundstate. The pyrochlore osmate Cd2Os2O7 nonetheless exhibits a MIT intimately entwined with magnetic order with phenomena similar to pyrochlore iridates. Here we report the first resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) measurements on an osmium compound, allowing us to determine the salient electronic and magnetic energy scales controlling the MIT in Cd2Os2O7, which we benchmark against detailed quantum chemistry calculations. In particular, we reveal the emergence at the MIT of a magnetic excitation corresponding to a superposition of multiple spin-flip processes from an Ising-like all-in/all-out magnetic groundstate. We discuss our results with respect to the role of SOC in magnetically mediated MITs in 5d systems
We investigated the electronic structure of layered Mn oxide Bi3Mn4O12(NO3) with a Mn honeycomb lattice by x-ray absorption spectroscopy. The valence of Mn was determined to be 4+ with a small charge-transfer energy. We estimated the values of superexchange interactions up to the fourth nearest neighbors (J1, J2, J3, and J4) by unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations and a perturbation method. We found that the absolute values of J1 through J4 are similar with positive (antiferromagnetic) J1 and J4, and negative (ferromagnetic) J2 and J3, due to Mn-O-O-Mn pathways activated by the smallness of charge-transfer energy. The negative J3 provides magnetic frustration in the honeycomb lattice to prevent long-range ordering.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are self-assemblies of metal ions and organic ligands, provide a tunable platform to search a new state of matter. A two-dimensional (2D) perfect kagome lattice, whose geometrical frustration is a key to realizing quantum spin liquids, has been formed in the ${pi}$-${d}$ conjugated 2D MOF [Cu$_{3}$(C$_{6}$S$_{6}$)]$_{n}$ (Cu-BHT). The recent discovery of its superconductivity with a critical temperature $T_{rm c}$ of 0.25,kelvin raises fundamental questions about the nature of electron pairing. Here, we show that Cu-BHT is a strongly correlated unconventional superconductor with extremely low superfluid density. A nonexponential temperature dependence of superfluid density is observed, indicating the possible presence of superconducting gap nodes. The magnitude of superfluid density is much smaller than those in conventional superconductors, and follows the Uemuras relation of strongly correlated superconductors. These results imply that the unconventional superconductivity in Cu-BHT originates from electron correlations related to spin fluctuations of kagome lattice.