2017/08/31 by Yijun Yu, Y. J. Yu, Y. Xu +13 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Condensed matter physics #Magnetic field #Materials science #Perovskite Materials and Applications #Phase (matter) #Phase transition #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Scattering #Thermal conductivity #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.120.067202
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 067202 (2018) · 6 pages, 4 figures
openalex created_date 2017/08/31 · arxiv created 2017/09/14 · openalex publication_date 2018/02/08 · arxiv updated 2018/02/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recently, there have been increasingly hot debates on whether there exists a quantum spin liquid in the Kitaev honeycomb magnet α-RuCl3 in a high magnetic field. To investigate this issue, we perform ultralow-temperature thermal conductivity measurements on single crystals of α-RuCl3 down to 80 mK and up to 9 T. Our experiments clearly show a field-induced phase transition occurring at μ0Hc≈7.5 T, above which the magnetic order is completely suppressed. The minimum of thermal conductivity at 7.5 T is attributed to the strong scattering of phonons by magnetic fluctuations. Most importantly, above 7.5 T, we do not observe any significant contribution of thermal conductivity from gapless magnetic excitations, which puts a strong constraint on the nature of the high-field phase of α-RuCl3.