2008/09/30 by Mayra Tovar, Kumar Raman, Kumar S. Raman +1 · 22 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Antiferromagnetism #Condensed matter physics #Dimer #Heisenberg model #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Molecule #Nuclear magnetic resonance #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Spin (aerodynamics) #Valence (chemistry) #Valence bond theory #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.79.024405
published in Physical Review B 79(2) (American Physical Society) · 15 pages, 7 figures; An error in version 2 has been corrected which changes our conclusions (Eq. 8 of version 2 does not apply for systems that do not conserve spin)
arxiv created 2008/10/22 · openalex publication_date 2009/01/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the effect of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions on the low-temperature magnetic susceptibility for a system whose low energy physics is dominated by short-range valence bonds (singlets). Our general perturbative approach is applied to specific models expected to be in this class, including the Shastry-Sutherland model of the spin-dimer compound SrCu2(BO3)2 and the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model of the recently discovered S=1/2 kagom'e compound ZnCu3(OH)6Cl2. The central result is that a short-ranged valence-bond phase, when perturbed with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, will remain time-reversal symmetric in the absence of a magnetic field but the susceptibility will be nonzero in the T\ensuremath→0 limit. Applied to ZnCu3(OH)6Cl2, this model provides an avenue for reconciling experimental results, such as the lack of magnetic order and lack of any sign of a spin gap, with known theoretical facts about the kagom'e Heisenberg antiferromagnet.