Journal article
Anisotropic susceptibilities in the honeycomb Kitaev system alpha-RuCl3
P Lampen-Kelley, S Rachel, J Reuther, J-Q Yan, A Banerjee, CA Bridges, HB Cao, SE Nagler, D Mandrus
PHYSICAL REVIEW B | AMER PHYSICAL SOC | Published : 2018
Abstract
The magnetic insulator α-RuCl3 is a promising candidate to realize Kitaev interactions on a quasi-two-dimensional honeycomb lattice. We perform extensive susceptibility measurements on single crystals of α-RuCl3, including angle dependence of the in-plane longitudinal and transverse susceptibilities, which reveal a unidirectional anisotropy within the honeycomb plane. By comparing the experimental results to a high-temperature expansion of a Kitaev-Heisenberg-Γ spin Hamiltonian with bond anisotropy, we find excellent agreement with the observed phase shift and periodicity of the angle-resolved susceptibilities. Within this model, we show that the pronounced difference between in-plane and ou..
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Awarded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative
Awarded by DFG
Awarded by ARC
Funding Acknowledgements
We acknowledge discussions with J. van den Brink, B. Buchner, P. Gegenwart, L. Janssen, R. Thomale, M. Vojta, and A. U. B. Wolter. P.L.K. and D.M. were supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative Grant No. GBMF4416. J.-Q.Y. and C.A.B. acknowledge support from the U.S. Department of Energy (U.S.-DOE), Office of Science - Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. A.B., H.B.C., S.E.N. and the work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory High Flux Isotope Reactor were supported by U.S.-DOE, Office of Science - BES, Scientific User Facilities Division. S.R. was supported by the DFG through SFB 1143 and an ARC Future Fellowship (FT180100211). J.R. is supported by the Freie Universitat Berlin within the Excellence Initiative of the German Research Foundation.