Gapless Spin Excitations in the Field-Induced Quantum Spin Liquid Phase of alpha-RuCl3

2017/03/31 by Jiacheng Zheng, Kejing Ran, Tianrun Li +7 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.119.227208

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 227208 (2017) · 6 pages, 4 figures. 1 supplemental materials upon request or available in PRL journal website

arxiv created 2017/12/11 · arxiv updated 2017/12/12

Abstract

α-RuCl₃ is a leading candidate material for theobservation of physics related to the Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL). By combined susceptibility, specific-heat, and nuclear-magnetic-resonance measurements, we demonstrate that α-RuCl₃ undergoes a quantum phase transition to a QSL in a magnetic field of 7.5 T applied in the ab plane. We show further that this high-field QSL phase has gapless spin excitations over a field range up to 16 T. This highly unconventional result, unknown in either Heisenberg or Kitaev magnets, offers insight essential to establishing the physics of α-RuCl₃.

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