We investigate the effects of hydrostatic pressure on α-RuCl3, a prototypical material for the Kitaev spin model on a honeycomb lattice with a possible spin-liquid ground state. Using ultrasound measurements at pressures up to 1.16 GPa, we reveal significant modifications of the acoustic properties and the H-T phase diagram of this material. Hydrostatic pressure suppresses the three-dimensional magnetic order and induces a dimerization transition at higher pressures. At low pressures, the sound attenuation exhibits a linear temperature dependence, while above 0.28 GPa, it becomes nearly temperature independent, suggesting a shift in the phonon scattering regime dominated by Majorana fermions. These findings provide new insights into spin-strain interactions in Kitaev magnets and deliver a detailed characterization of the H-T phase diagram of α-RuCl3 under hydrostatic pressure.
@article{arxiv.2503.04656,
title = {Spin-strain interactions under hydrostatic pressure in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$},
author = {A. Hauspurg and Susmita Singh and T. Yanagisawa and V. Tsurkan and J. Wosnitza and Wolfram Brenig and Natalia B. Perkins and S. Zherlitsyn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.04656},
year = {2025}
}