2017/05/16 by Sándor Tóth, Tóth, Sándor, Katharina Rolfs +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1705.05699
5 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2017/05/16 · arxiv updated 2017/05/17
We measured the magnetic correlations in the triangular lattice spin-liquid candidate material YbMgGaO4 via polarized neutron diffraction. The extracted in-plane and out-of-plane components of the magnetic structure factor show clear anisotropy. We found that short-range correlations persist at the lowest measured temperature of 52 mK and neutron scattering intensity is centered at the M middle-point of the hexagonal Brillouin-zone edge. Moreover, we found pronounced spin anisotropy, with different correlation lengths for the in-plane and out-of-plane spin components. When comparing to a self-consistent Gaussian appoximation, our data clearly support a model with only first-neighbor coupling and strongly anisotropic exchanges.