In RuCl3, inelastic neutron scattering and Raman spectroscopy reveal a continuum of non-spin-wave excitations that persists to high temperature, suggesting the presence of a spin liquid state on a honeycomb lattice. In the context of the Kitaev model, magnetic fields introduce finite interactions between the elementary excitations, and thus the effects of high magnetic fields - comparable to the spin exchange energy scale - must be explored. Here we report measurements of the magnetotropic coefficient - the second derivative of the free energy with respect to magnetic field orientation - over a wide range of magnetic fields and temperatures. We find that magnetic field and temperature compete to determine the magnetic response in a way that is independent of the large intrinsic exchange interaction energy. This emergent scale-invariant magnetic anisotropy provides evidence for a high degree of exchange frustration that favors the formation of a spin liquid state in RuCl3.
@article{arxiv.2005.04228,
title = {Scale-invariant magnetic anisotropy in RuCl$_3$ at high magnetic fields},
author = {K. A. Modic and Ross D. McDonald and J. P. C. Ruff and Maja D. Bachmann and You Lai and Johanna C. Palmstrom and David Graf and Mun Chan and F. F. Balakirev and J. B. Betts and G. S. Boebinger and Marcus Schmidt and D. A. Sokolov and Philip J. W. Moll and B. J. Ramshaw and Arkady Shekhter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.04228},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1901.09245. Nature Physics