Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA.
Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
Nat Commun. 2023 Mar 14;14(1):1404. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-36886-2.
While geometrically frustrated quantum magnets host rich exotic spin states with potentials for revolutionary quantum technologies, most of them are necessarily good insulators which are difficult to be integrated with modern electrical circuit. The grand challenge is to electrically detect the emergent fluctuations and excitations by introducing charge carriers that interact with the localized spins without destroying their collective spin states. Here, we show that, by designing a BiIrO/DyTiO heterostructure, the breaking of the spin-ice rule in insulating DyTiO leads to a charge response in the conducting BiIrO measured as anomalous magnetoresistance during the field-induced Kagome ice-to-saturated ice transition. The magnetoresistive anomaly also captures the characteristic angular and temperature dependence of this ice-rule-breaking transition, which has been understood as magnetic monopole condensation. These results demonstrate a novel heteroepitaxial approach for electronically probing the transition between exotic insulating spin states, laying out a blueprint for the metallization of frustrated quantum magnets.
虽然几何阻挫量子磁体具有丰富的奇特自旋态，具有革命性的量子技术潜力，但它们大多是必要的绝缘体，难以与现代电路集成。一个巨大的挑战是通过引入与局域自旋相互作用的电荷载流子，在不破坏其集体自旋态的情况下，电检测到新兴的涨落和激发。在这里，我们通过设计 BiIrO/DyTiO 异质结构，展示了在绝缘 DyTiO 中打破自旋冰规则导致在导电 BiIrO 中出现电荷响应，这种响应表现为在 Kagome 冰到饱和冰相变过程中反常磁电阻。磁电阻异常还捕获了这种打破自旋冰规则的相变的特征角和温度依赖性，这被理解为磁单极凝聚。这些结果展示了一种用于电子探测奇特绝缘自旋态之间转变的新的异质外延方法，为阻挫量子磁体的金属化铺平了道路。
