Abstract
Recently, Yb-based triangular-lattice antiferromagnets have garnered significant interest as possible quantum spin-liquid candidates. One example is YbMgGaO4, which showed many promising spin-liquid features, but also possesses a high degree of disorder owing to site-mixing between the non-magnetic cations. To further elucidate the role of chemical disorder and to explore the phase diagram of these materials in applied field, we present neutron scattering and sensitive magnetometry measurements of the closely related compound, YbZnGaO4. Our results suggest a difference in magnetic anisotropy between the two compounds, and we use key observations of the magnetic phase crossover to motivate an exploration of the field- and exchange parameter-dependent phase diagram, providing an expanded view of the available magnetic states in applied field. This enriched map of the phase space serves as a basis to restrict the values of parameters describing the magnetic Hamiltonian with broad application to recently discovered related materials.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 78 |
| Journal | npj Quantum Materials |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2021 |
Funding
The work of A.L.C. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under Awards No. DE-FG02-04ER46174 and DE-SC0021221. P.A.M. acknowledges support from JINR Grant for young scientists 20-302-03. A.L.C. would like to thank Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) where this work was advanced. KITP is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1748958. A portion of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is supported by the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. DMR1157490 and DMR-1644779, the State of Florida and the U.S. Department of Energy. A portion of this research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy. gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). We acknowledge the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, in providing the neutron research facilities used in this work. The identification of any commercial product or trade name does not imply endorsement or recommendation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.