npj Quantum Materials ( IF 5.4 ) Pub Date : 2024-10-12 , DOI: 10.1038/s41535-024-00691-x Yan-Xing Yang, Cheng-Yu Jiang, Liang-Long Huang, Zi-Hao Zhu, Chang-Sheng Chen, Qiong Wu, Zhao-Feng Ding, Cheng Tan, Kai-Wen Chen, Pabi K. Biswas, Adrian D. Hillier, You-Guo Shi, Cai Liu, Le Wang, Fei Ye, Jia-Wei Mei, Lei Shu
The vacancy effect in quantum spin liquid (QSL) has been extensively studied. A finite density of random vacancies in the Kitaev model can lead to a pileup of low-energy density of states (DOS), which is generally experimentally determined by a scaling behavior of thermodynamic or magnetization quantities. Here, we report detailed muon spin relaxation (μSR) results of H3LiIr2O6, a Kitaev QSL candidate with vacancies. The absence of magnetic order is confirmed down to 80 mK, and the spin fluctuations are found to be persistent at low temperatures. Intriguingly, the time-field scaling law of longitudinal-field (LF)-μSR polarization is observed down to 0.1 K. This indicates a dynamical scaling, whose critical exponent of 0.46 is excellently consistent with the scaling behavior of specific heat and magnetization data. All the observations point to the finite DOS with the form \(N(E)\sim {E}^{-\nu }\), which is expected for the Kitaev QSL in the presence of vacancies. Our μSR study provides a dynamical fingerprint of the power-law low-energy DOS and introduces a crucial new insight into the vacancy effect in QSL.
中文翻译:
Kitaev 蜂窝材料 H3LiIr2O6 上自旋动力学的 μ 子自旋弛豫研究
量子自旋液体 (QSL) 中的空位效应已被广泛研究。Kitaev 模型中随机空位的有限密度会导致低能量态密度 (DOS) 的堆积,这通常由热力学或磁化量的缩放行为在实验中决定。在这里,我们报告了 H3LiIr2O6 的详细 μ 子自旋弛豫 (μSR) 结果,这是一个有空缺的 Kitaev QSL 候选者。确认低至 80 mK 时不存在磁序,并且发现自旋波动在低温下持续存在。有趣的是,纵场 (LF)-μSR 极化的时场缩放定律可以观察到低至 0.1 K。这表明动态缩放,其临界指数 0.46 与比热和磁化数据的缩放行为非常一致。所有观测结果都指向 \(N(E)\sim {E}^{-\nu }\) 形式的有限 DOS,在存在空缺的情况下,Kitaev QSL 是预期的。我们的 μSR 研究提供了幂律低能耗 DOS 的动态指纹,并为 QSL 中的空位效应引入了重要的新见解。