The insulating honeycomb magnet α-RuCl3 exhibits fractionalized excitiations that signal its proximity to a Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) state, however, at T=0, fragile long-range magnetic order arises from non-Kitaev terms in the Hamiltonian. Spin vacancies in the form of Ir3+ substituted for Ru are found to destabilize this long-range order. Neutron diffraction and bulk characterization of Ru1−xIrxCl3 show that the magnetic ordering temperature is suppressed with increasing x and evidence of zizag magnetic order is absent for x>0.3. Inelastic neutron scattering demonstrates that the signature of fractionalized excitations is maintained over the full range of x investigated. The depleted lattice without magnetic order thus hosts a spin-liquid-like ground state that may indicate the relevance of Kitaev physics in the magnetically dilute limit of RuCl3.
@article{arxiv.1612.07202,
title = {Destabilization of magnetic order in a dilute Kitaev spin liquid candidate},
author = {P. Lampen-Kelley and A. Banerjee and A. A. Aczel and H. B. Cao and M. B. Stone and C. A. Bridges and J. -Q. Yan and S. E. Nagler and D. Mandrus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.07202},
year = {2017}
}