Pulling order from the brink of disorder: Observation of a nodal line spin liquid and fluctuation stabilized order in the FCC lattice K2IrCl6

Kemp Plumb (Brown U, Providence)

Sep 27. 2024, 11:30 — 12:10

Competing interactions in frustrated magnets can give rise to highly degenerate ground states from which correlated liquid-like states of matter often emerge. The face centered cubic (FCC) antiferromagnet is one of the oldest and most important models that is characterized by such a ground state degeneracy. However, there a few materials that maintain the necessary cubic symmetry at low temperatures and permit the study of the spin-dynamics of this model. In this talk, I will discuss the specific example of K2IrCl6 that realizes a j=1/2 Heisenberg-Kitaev model on the FCC lattice. I will present inelastic neutron scattering measurements on this compound that show the emergence of a “nodal-line” classical spin-liquid, where the magnetism is characterized by a three-dimensional Hamiltonian but with correlations that diverge along two dimensions and are short range along the third. This nodal line spin liquid is highly susceptible to order-by-disorder and small perturbations that cause K2IrCl6 to magnetically order at low temperatures.  However, I will show that even in the ordered state, a proximity to the nodal line spin liquid enhances quantum fluctuations that control the magnetic excitations and thermodynamics of K2IrCl6. In K2IrCl6,  strong quantum fluctuations act  counterintuitively to stabilize a magnetic order and dictate its low energy physics, despite the order being selected by small perturbations.

Further Information
Venue:
ESI Boltzmann Lecture Hall
Associated Event:
Spin-Orbit Entangled Quantum Magnetism (Workshop)
Organizer(s):
Cesare Franchini (U of Vienna)
Vesna Mitrovic (Brown U, Providence)
Leonid Pourovskii (École Polytechnique, Palaiseau)