While multiple time scales generally arise in the dynamics of disordered systems, we find multiple time scales in absence of disorder, in a simple model with hard local constraints. The dynamics of the model, which consists of local collective rearra
ngements of various scales, is not determined by the smallest scale but by a length $l^*$ that grows at low energies. In real space we find a hierarchy of fast and slow regions: each slow region is geometrically insulated from all faster degrees of freedom, which are localized in fast pockets below percolation thresholds. A tentative analogy with structural glasses is given, which attributes the slowing down of the dynamics to the growing size of mobile elementary excitations, rather than to the size of some domains.
Magnetic excitations in the isostructural spin-dimer systems Sr3Cr2O8 and Ba3Cr2O8 are probed by means of high-field electron spin resonance at sub-terahertz frequencies. Three types of magnetic modes were observed. One mode is gapless and correspond
s to transitions within excited states, while two other sets of modes are gapped and correspond to transitions from the ground to the first excited states. The selection rules of the gapped modes are analyzed in terms of a dynamical Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, suggesting the presence of phonon-assisted effects in the low-temperature spin dynamics of Sr3Cr2O8 and Ba3Cr2O8
By considering the constrained motion of classical spins in a geometrically frustrated magnet, we find a dynamical freezing temperature below which the system gets trapped in metastable states with a frozen moment and dynamical heterogeneities. The r
esidual collective degrees of freedom are strongly correlated, and by spontaneously forming aggregates, they are unable to reorganize the system. The phase space is then fragmented in a macroscopic number of disconnected sectors (broken ergodicity), resulting in self-induced disorder and thermodynamic anomalies, measured by the loss of a finite configurational entropy. We discuss these results in the view of experimental results on the kagome compounds, SrCr(9p)Ga(12-9p)O19, (H30)Fe3(SO4)2(OH)6, Cu3V2O7(OH)2.2H2O and Cu3BaV2O8(OH)2.
We argue that the spin-wave breakdown in the Heisenberg kagome antiferromagnet signals an instability of the ground state and leads, through an emergent local constraint, to a quantum dynamics described by a gauge theory similar to that of chromodyna
mics. For integer spins, we show that the quantum fluctuations of the gauge modes select the sqrt(3)xsqrt(3) Neel state with an on-site moment renormalized by color resonances. We find non-magnetic low-energy excitations that may be responsible for a deconfinement transition at experimentally accessible temperatures which we estimate.
We study the electron spin resonance (ESR) of low-dimensional spin systems at high temperature, and test the Kubo-Tomita theory of exchange narrowing. In finite-size systems (molecular magnets), we found a double-peak resonance which strongly differs
from the usual Lorentzian. For infinite systems, we have predictions for the linewidth and lineshape as a function of the anisotropy strength. For this, we have used an interpolation between a non-perturbative calculation of the memory function at short times (exact diagonalization) and the hydrodynamic spin-diffusion at long times. We show that the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya anisotropies generally induce a much larger linewidth than the exchange anisotropies in two dimensions, contrary to the one-dimensional case.
We have obtained the zero-temperature phase diagram of the kagome antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in Schwinger-boson mean-field theory. We find quantum phase transitions (first or second order) between different topological sp
in liquids and Neel ordered phases (either the $sqrt{3} times sqrt{3}$ state or the so-called Q=0 state). In the regime of small Schwinger-boson density, the results bear some resemblances with exact diagonalization results and we briefly discuss some issues of the mean-field treatment. We calculate the equal-time structure factor (and its angular average to allow for a direct comparison with experiments on powder samples), which extends earlier work on the classical kagome to the quantum regime. We also discuss the dynamical structure factors of the topological spin liquid and the Neel ordered phase.
