Abstract
The delafossitelike compound NaYbO2 hosts a triangular lattice of Yb3+ moments and is a promising candidate for the realization of a quantum spin liquid ground state—an exotic, quantum-disordered magnetic phase featuring long-range entanglement of spins. Tuning this system away from this quantum-disordered regime toward classical order or spin freezing is a powerful approach to shed light on the nature of the parent ground state. Here we leverage the substitution of nonmagnetic Lu3+ onto the Yb3+ sites to study the effects of magnetic disorder in NaYbO2 using low-temperature ac susceptibility, heat capacity, and muon spin relaxation (μSR) measurements. Our μSR measurements reveal resilient, correlated magnetic fluctuations that persist to at least 15% dilution, precluding conventional spin freezing and magnetic inhomogeneity. Heat capacity and magnetic susceptibility resolve a rapid suppression of the field-induced “up-up-down” magnetic order upon dilution and a crossover in the power-law behavior of the low-temperature magnetic excitations associated with the zero-field quantum disordered ground state. Taken together, these results support the notion of a robust network of entangled moments in NaYbO2 and provide experimental validation of several models of a Heisenberg triangular lattice antiferromagnet in the presence of disorder.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 144434 |
| Journal | Physical Review B |
| Volume | 112 |
| Issue number | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 21 2025 |
Funding
The authors acknowledge various forms of support from M. Bordelon, P. Sarte, C. Benyacko, D. Rout, R. Yin, and C. Gomez Alvarado. This work was supported by the US De-partment of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Grant No. DE-SC0017752. S.J.G.A. acknowledges the additional financial support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1650114. Work by B.R.O. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. This research made use of the shared facilities of the NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at UC Santa Barbara (Grant No. DMR-2308708). Experiments at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source were supported by beam time allocation RB2310423 from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The authors have no conflicts to disclose. DMR-2308708). Experiments at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source were supported by beam time allocation RB2310423 from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The authors have no conflicts to disclose. partment of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Grant No. DE-SC0017752. S.J.G.A. acknowledges the additional financial support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1650114. Work by B.R.O. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. This research made use of the shared facilities of the NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at UC Santa Barbara (Grant No.