Macroscopic signature of protected spins in a dense frustrated magnet
Abstract
The inability of systems of interacting objects to satisfy all constraints simultaneously leads to frustration. A particularly important consequence of frustration is the ability to access certain protected parts of a system without disturbing the others. For magnets such "protectorates" have been inferred from theory and from neutron scattering, but their practical consequences have been unclear. We show that a magnetic analogue of optical hole-burning can address these protected spin clusters in a well-known, geometrically frustrated Heisenberg system, gadolinium gallium garnet. Our measurements additionally provide a resolution of a famous discrepancy between the bulk magnetometry and neutron diffraction results for this magnetic compound.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0810.4744,
title = {Macroscopic signature of protected spins in a dense frustrated magnet},
author = {S. Ghosh and T. F. Rosenbaum and G. Aeppli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.4744},
year = {2008}
}