Evidence for a spinon Fermi surface in a triangular lattice quantum spin liquid candidate
| Autor: | Shen, Yao, Li, Yao-Dong, Wo, Hongliang, Li, Yuesheng, Shen, Shoudong, Pan, Bingying, Wang, Qisi, Walker, H. C., Steffens, P., Boehm, M., Hao, Yiqing, Quintero-Castro, D. L., Harriger, L. W., Frontzek, M. D., Hao, Lijie, Meng, Siqin, Zhang, Qingming, Chen, Gang, Zhao, Jun |
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| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Nature 540, 559-562 (2016) |
| Druh dokumentu: | Working Paper |
| DOI: | 10.1038/nature20614 |
| Popis: | A quantum spin liquid is an exotic quantum state of matter in which spins are highly entangled and remain disordered down to zero temperature. Such a state of matter is potentially relevant to high-temperature superconductivity and quantum-information applications, and experimental identification of a quantum spin liquid state is of fundamental importance for our understanding of quantum matter. Theoretical studies have proposed various quantum-spin-liquid ground states, most of which are characterized by exotic spin excitations with fractional quantum numbers (termed `spinon'). Here, we report neutron scattering measurements that reveal broad spin excitations covering a wide region of the Brillouin zone in a triangular antiferromagnet YbMgGaO4. The observed diffusive spin excitation persists at the lowest measured energy and shows a clear upper excitation edge, which is consistent with the particle-hole excitation of a spinon Fermi surface. Our results therefore point to a QSL state with a spinon Fermi surface in YbMgGaO4 that has a perfect spin-1/2 triangular lattice as in the original proposal of quantum spin liquids. Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures |
| Databáze: | arXiv |
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