Signatures of a magnetic field-induced unconventional nematic liquid in the frustrated and anisotropic spin-chain cuprate LiCuSbO4

Abstract Modern theories of quantum magnetism predict exotic multipolar states in weakly interacting strongly frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor (NN) inchain exchange in high magnetic fields. Experimentally these states remained elusive so far. Here we report s...

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Autores principales: H.-J. Grafe, S. Nishimoto, M. Iakovleva, E. Vavilova, L. Spillecke, A. Alfonsov, M.-I. Sturza, S. Wurmehl, H. Nojiri, H. Rosner, J. Richter, U. K. Rößler, S.-L. Drechsler, V. Kataev, B. Büchner
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/daaa2984ad4447b3a4fd80708e823241
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Sumario:Abstract Modern theories of quantum magnetism predict exotic multipolar states in weakly interacting strongly frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor (NN) inchain exchange in high magnetic fields. Experimentally these states remained elusive so far. Here we report strong indications of a magnetic field-induced nematic liquid arising above a field of ~13 T in the edge-sharing chain cuprate LiSbCuO4 ≡ LiCuSbO4. This interpretation is based on the observation of a field induced spin-gap in the measurements of the 7Li NMR spin relaxation rate T 1 −1 as well as a contrasting field-dependent power-law behavior of T 1 −1 vs. T and is further supported by static magnetization and ESR data. An underlying theoretical microscopic approach favoring a nematic scenario is based essentially on the NN XYZ exchange anisotropy within a model for frustrated spin-1/2 chains and is investigated by the DMRG technique. The employed exchange parameters are justified qualitatively by electronic structure calculations for LiCuSbO4.