English

Pressure-Tuned Metamagnetism and Emergent Three-Body Interactions in CsFeCl$_3$

Materials Science 2025-12-29 v1

Abstract

We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of the triangular-lattice quantum antiferromagnet CsFeCl3_3 under high magnetic fields and high pressure. Pulsed-field magnetization for the magnetic field along the symmetric cc direction at ambient pressure reveals a magnetization process from a nonmagnetic singlet ground state with a nearly linear increase between 3.7 and 10.7 T, a plateau-like region, and then a sharp stepwise metamagnetic transition near 32 T. Wide frequency--field range electron spin resonance indicates that the low-field regime originates from the J=1J = 1 manifold, while the high-field metamagnetic transition suggests a level crossing between the J=1J = 1 and J=2J = 2 lowest states. Pulsed-field magnetic susceptibilities measured with a proximity detector oscillator under high pressure show that the low-field nonmagnetic singlet phase is gradually suppressed, while the high-field metamagnetic transition evolves into an increasingly rich pattern of fractional steps. While the observations at low to intermediate fields can be understood within the established spin-1 description, the high-field regime requires a new perspective, which we provide through a projected spin-1/2 framework built from Zeeman-selected crystal-field states not related by time reversal. This construction naturally allows emergent three-body interactions on triangular plaquettes and explains the asymmetric evolution of the fractional steps in the magnetization. Our findings reveal that high-field effective spin models in quantum magnets with separated yet accessible crystal-field multiplets are not constrained to even-body couplings, but can naturally host odd-body terms, opening a broader avenue for realizing field-asymmetric magnetization processes and exotic phases beyond conventional even-body physics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.21682,
  title  = {Pressure-Tuned Metamagnetism and Emergent Three-Body Interactions in CsFeCl$_3$},
  author = {K. Nihongi and T. Kida and Y. Narumi and Y. Etoh and D. Yamamoto and M. Matsumoto and N. Kurita and H. Tanaka and K. Yu. Povarov and S. A. Zvyagin and J. Wosnitza and K. Kindo and Y. Uwatoko and M. Hagiwara},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.21682},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 14 figures