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Effect of structural disorder on the Kitaev magnet Ag$_{3}$LiIr$_{2}$O$_{6}$

Materials Science 2021-03-19 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Searching for an ideal Kitaev spin liquid candidate with anyonic excitations and long-range entanglement has motivated the synthesis of a new family of intercalated Kitaev magnets such as H3_{3}LiIr2_{2}O6_{6}, Cu2_{2}IrO3_{3}, and Ag3_{3}LiIr2_{2}O6_{6}. The absence of a susceptibility peak and a two-step release of the magnetic entropy in these materials has been proposed as evidence of proximity to the Kitaev spin liquid. Here we present a comparative study of the magnetic susceptibility, heat capacity, and muon spin relaxation (μ\muSR) between two samples of Ag3_{3}LiIr2_{2}O6_{6} in the clean and disordered limits. In the disordered limit, the absence of a peak in either susceptibility or heat capacity and a weakly depolarizing μ\muSR signal may suggest a proximate spin liquid ground state. In the clean limit, however, we resolve a peak in both susceptibility and heat capacity data, and observe clear oscillations in μ\muSR that confirm long-range antiferromagnetic ordering. The μ\muSR oscillations fit to a Bessel function, characteristic of an incommensurate order, as reported in the parent compound α\alpha-Li2_{2}IrO3_{3}. Our results clarify the role of structural disorder in the intercalated Kitaev magnets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.07004,
  title  = {Effect of structural disorder on the Kitaev magnet Ag$_{3}$LiIr$_{2}$O$_{6}$},
  author = {Faranak Bahrami and Eric M. Kenney and Chennan Wang and Adam Berlie and Oleg I. Lebedev and Michael J. Graf and Fazel Tafti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.07004},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

8 pages, 9 figures