Weak coupling of pseudoacoustic phonons and magnon dynamics in the incommensurate spin-ladder compound S r14 C u24 O41

Xi Chen, Dipanshu Bansal, Sean Sullivan, Douglas L. Abernathy, Adam A. Aczel, Jianshi Zhou, Olivier Delaire, Li Shi

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    Abstract

    Intriguing lattice dynamics have been predicted for aperiodic crystals that contain incommensurate substructures. Here we report inelastic neutron scattering measurements of phonon and magnon dispersions in Sr14Cu24O41, which contains incommensurate one-dimensional (1D) chain and two-dimensional (2D) ladder substructures. Two distinct pseudoacoustic phonon modes, corresponding to the sliding motion of one sublattice against the other, are observed for atomic motions polarized along the incommensurate axis. In the long wavelength limit, it is found that the sliding mode shows a remarkably small energy gap of 1.7-1.9 meV, indicating very weak interactions between the two incommensurate sublattices. The measurements also reveal a gapped and steep linear magnon dispersion of the ladder sublattice. The high group velocity of this magnon branch and weak coupling with acoustic and pseudoacoustic phonons can explain the large magnon thermal conductivity in Sr14Cu24O41 crystals. In addition, the magnon specific heat is determined from the measured total specific heat and phonon density of states and exhibits a Schottky anomaly due to gapped magnon modes of the spin chains. These findings offer new insights into the phonon and magnon dynamics and thermal transport properties of incommensurate magnetic crystals that contain low-dimensional substructures.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number134309
    JournalPhysical Review B
    Volume94
    Issue number13
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Oct 21 2016

    Funding

    This paper was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) MURI Award No. W911NF-14-1-0016. Neutron scattering measurements and analysis (D.B. and O.D.) were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division through the Office of Science Early Career Research Program of O.D. (DE-SC0016166). The use of ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source was sponsored by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy. The authors thank helpful discussion with David G. Cahill and Yaroslav Tserkovnyak.

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