Abstract

Magnetic honeycomb iridates are thought to show strongly spin-anisotropic exchange interactions which, when highly frustrated, lead to an exotic state of matter known as the Kitaev quantum spin liquid. However, in all known examples these materials magnetically order at finite temperatures, the scale of which may imply weak frustration. Here we show that the application of a relatively small magnetic field drives the three-dimensional magnet β-Li2IrO3 from its incommensurate ground state into a quantum correlated paramagnet. Interestingly, this paramagnetic state admixes a zig-zag spin mode analogous to the zig-zag order seen in other Mott-Kitaev compounds. The rapid onset of the field-induced correlated state implies the exchange interactions are delicately balanced, leading to strong frustration and a near degeneracy of different ground states.

Details

Title
Correlated states in β-Li2IrO3 driven by applied magnetic fields
Author
Ruiz, Alejandro 1 ; Frano, Alex 2 ; Breznay, Nicholas P 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kimchi, Itamar 3 ; Helm, Toni 1 ; Oswald, Iain 4 ; Chan, Julia Y 4 ; Birgeneau, R J 1 ; Islam, Zahirul 5 ; Analytis, James G 1 

1  Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA 
2  Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA 
3  Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 
4  Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA 
5  Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA 
Pages
1-6
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Oct 2017
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01071-9
ProQuest document ID
1953962348
Copyright
© 2017. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.