Zhong Ruidan, Gao Tong, Ong Nai Phuan, Cava Robert J
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Sci Adv. 2020 Jan 24;6(4):eaay6953. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay6953. eCollection 2020 Jan.
Layered honeycomb magnets are of interest as potential realizations of the Kitaev quantum spin liquid (KQSL), a quantum state with long-range spin entanglement and an exactly solvable Hamiltonian. Conventional magnetically ordered states are present for all currently known candidate materials, however, because non-Kitaev terms in the Hamiltonians obscure the Kitaev physics. Current experimental studies of the KQSL are focused on 4 or 5 transition metal-based honeycombs, in which strong spin-orbit coupling can be expected, yielding Kitaev interaction that dominates in an applied magnetic field. In contrast, for 3-based layered honeycomb magnets, spin-orbit coupling is weak, and thus, Kitaev physics should be substantially less accessible. Here, we report our studies on BaCo(AsO), for which we find that the magnetic order associated with the non-Kitaev interactions can be fully suppressed by a relatively low magnetic field, yielding a nonmagnetic material and implying the presence of strong magnetic frustration and weak non-Kitaev interactions.
层状蜂窝状磁体作为基泰耶夫量子自旋液体（KQSL）的潜在实现形式备受关注，KQSL是一种具有长程自旋纠缠和精确可解哈密顿量的量子态。然而，对于所有目前已知的候选材料，传统的磁有序态都存在，因为哈密顿量中的非基泰耶夫项掩盖了基泰耶夫物理特性。目前对KQSL的实验研究集中在4种或5种基于过渡金属的蜂窝状结构上，在这些结构中可以预期有强自旋轨道耦合，从而产生在施加磁场中占主导地位的基泰耶夫相互作用。相比之下，对于基于3的层状蜂窝状磁体，自旋轨道耦合较弱，因此，基泰耶夫物理特性应该很难被观测到。在这里，我们报告了对BaCo(AsO)的研究，我们发现与非基泰耶夫相互作用相关的磁有序可以被相对较低的磁场完全抑制，从而产生一种非磁性材料，这意味着存在强磁阻挫和弱非基泰耶夫相互作用。
