Collapse of susceptibility and non-trivial spin dynamics in the hyper-honeycomb magnet β-Li₂IrO₃ under high pressure

2024/08/29 by Verrier, Aimé, Nagarajan, Vikram, Gendron, Louis-Thomas +2
#FOS: Physical sciences #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.16873

Abstract

We present high-pressure (2 GPa) ⁷Li nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements on single crystals of the hyper-honeycomb Kitaev magnet β-Li₂IrO₃. The spectra show evidence for a structural phase transition around 200 K and a coexistence of phases, consistent with the results of other measurement techniques. The NMR spectra and line shift measurements demonstrate a strong suppression of the local magnetic susceptibility at high pressure. However, the spin-lattice relaxation (1/T₁) shows a clear power-law temperature dependence. This is inconsistent with a gapped singlet ground state of dimers and tetramers, as was previously proposed, and is instead evocative of a more exotic quantum spin liquid-like ground state.

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