Phonon Heat Transport and Anisotropic Tuning of Quantum Fluctuations in a Frustrated Honeycomb Magnet

2024/06/25 by Haoran Fan, Fan, Haoran, Yue Chen +7
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Magnetic properties of thin films #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.17421

openalex publication_date 2024/06/25 · openalex created_date 2024/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Honeycomb cobalt oxides containing 3\itd Co²⁺ ions might realize frustrated magnetism and novel quantum phases. Among candidate materials, Na₃Co₂SbO₆ stands out for its distorted honeycomb lattice and significant in-plane anisotropy, motivating vector-field tuning inside the honeycomb plane. Here we use thermal transport down to the mK regime to study twin-free crystals of Na₃Co₂SbO₆ subject to in-plane vector fields. We find that the thermal conductivity κ never exceeds the heat-transport capability of phonons, rendering its suppression primarily due to phonon scattering off magnetic excitations and/or domain boundaries. The system's field-driven quantum criticality manifests itself as an abundance of magnetic fluctuations hindering the heat transport, which further depends on the field direction in an intriguing manner.

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