Spin-orbit coupling is an important ingredient to regulate the many-body physics, especially for many spin liquid candidate materials such as rare-earth magnets and Kitaev materials. The rare-earth chalcogenides NaYbCh2 (Ch = O, S, Se) is a congenital frustrating system to exhibit the intrinsic landmark of spin liquid by eliminating both the site disorders between Na+ and Yb3+ ions with the big ionic size difference and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction with the perfect triangular lattice of the Yb3+ ions. The temperature versus magnetic-field phase diagram is established by the magnetization, specific heat, and neutron-scattering measurements. Notably, the neutron diffraction spectra and the magnetization curve might provide microscopic evidence for a series of spin configuration for in-plane fields, which include the disordered spin liquid state, 120o antiferromagnet, and one-half magnetization state. Furthermore, the ground state is suggested to be a gapless spin liquid from inelastic neutron scattering, and the magnetic field adjusts the spin orbit coupling. Therefore, the strong spin-orbit coupling in the frustrated quantum magnet substantially enriches low-energy spin physics. This rare-earth family could offer a good platform for exploring the quantum spin liquid ground state and quantum magnetic transitions.
@article{arxiv.2002.09224,
title = {Magnetic field effects on the quantum spin liquid behaviors of NaYbS$_2$},
author = {Jiangtao Wu and Jianshu Li and Zheng Zhang and Changle Liu and YongHao Gao and Erxi Feng and Guochu Deng and Qingyong Ren and Zhe Wang and Rui Chen and Jan Embs and Fengfeng Zhu and Qing Huang and Ziji Xiang and Lu Chen and Yan Wu and E. S. Choi and Zhe Qu and Lu Li and Junfeng Wang and Haidong Zhou and Yixi Su and Xiaoqun Wang and Gang Chen and Qingming Zhang and Jie Ma},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.09224},
year = {2023}
}