Probing spin correlations with phonons in the strongly frustrated magnet ZnCr2O4

A. B. Sushkov; H. D. Drew; O. Tchernyshyov; W. Ratcliff; S. W. Cheong

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.137202

Probing spin correlations with phonons in the strongly frustrated magnet ZnCr2O4

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2009-11-10 v2

Authors: A. B. Sushkov , H. D. Drew , O. Tchernyshyov , W. Ratcliff , S. W. Cheong

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Abstract

The spin-lattice coupling plays an important role in strongly frustrated magnets. In ZnCr $_2$ O $_4$ , an excellent realization of the Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the ``pyrochlore'' network, a lattice distortion relieves the geometrical frustration through a spin-Peierls-like phase transition at $T_c = 12.5$ K. Conversely, spin correlations strongly influence the elastic properties of a frustrated magnet. By using infrared spectroscopy and published data on magnetic specific heat, we demonstrate that the frequency of an optical phonon triplet in ZnCr $_2$ O $_4$ tracks the nearest-neighbor spin correlations above $T_c$ . The splitting of the phonon triplet below $T_c$ provides a way to measure of the spin-Peierls order parameter.

Keywords

spin-lattice coupling phonon frustrated magnet spin-Peierls transition ZnCr2O4

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0411213,
  title  = {Probing spin correlations with phonons in the strongly frustrated magnet ZnCr2O4},
  author = {A. B. Sushkov and H. D. Drew and O. Tchernyshyov and W. Ratcliff and S. W. Cheong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0411213},
  year   = {2009}
}

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5 pages, 4 figures

Probing spin correlations with phonons in the strongly frustrated magnet ZnCr2O4

Abstract

Keywords

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