Gapped spin-1/2 spinon excitations in a new kagome quantum spin liquid compound Cu₃Zn(OH)₆FBr

2017/02/28 by Zili Feng, Zheng Li, Xin Meng +14 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0256-307x/34/7/077502

published as Chin. Phys. Lett., Vol. 34 Issue (7): 077502 (2017) · 5 pages and 3 figures. Supplementary Materials file is in the source file and also can be found in CPL published online version

arxiv created 2017/06/23 · arxiv updated 2017/06/26

Abstract

We report a new kagome quantum spin liquid candidate Cu₃Zn(OH)₆FBr, which does not experience any phase transition down to 50 mK, more than three orders lower than the antiferromagnetic Curie-Weiss temperature (∼ 200 K). A clear gap opening at low temperature is observed in the uniform spin susceptibility obtained from ¹⁹F nuclear magnetic resonance measurements. We observe the characteristic magnetic field dependence of the gap as expected for fractionalized spin-1/2 spinon excitations. Our experimental results provide firm evidence for spin fractionalization in a topologically ordered spin system, resembling charge fractionalization in the fractional quantum Hall state.

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