2008/10/10 by S. Ghosh, Surajit Ghosh, T. F. Rosenbaum +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.101.157205
published as Physical Review Letters, 101, 157205, 2008
openalex publication_date 2008/10/10 · arxiv created 2008/10/27 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The inability of systems of interacting objects to satisfy all constraints simultaneously leads to frustration. A particularly important consequence of frustration is the ability to access certain protected parts of a system without disturbing the others. For magnets such "protectorates" have been inferred from theory and from neutron scattering, but their practical consequences have been unclear. We show that a magnetic analogue of optical hole-burning can address these protected spin clusters in a well-known, geometrically frustrated Heisenberg system, gadolinium gallium garnet. Our measurements additionally provide a resolution of a famous discrepancy between the bulk magnetometry and neutron diffraction results for this magnetic compound.