24 research outputs found
Direct evidence for charge stripes in a layered cobalt oxide
Recent experiments indicate that static stripe-like charge order is generic to the hole-doped copper oxide superconductors and competes with superconductivity. Here we show that a similar type of charge order is present in La5/3 Sr1/3 CoO4 , an insulating analogue of the copper oxide superconductors containing cobalt in place of copper. The stripe phase we have detected is accompanied by short-range, quasi-one-dimensional, antiferromagnetic order, and provides a natural explanation for the distinctive hour- glass shape of the magnetic spectrum previously observed in neutron scattering mea- surements of La2âxSrx CoO4 and many hole-doped copper oxide superconductors. The results establish a solid empirical basis for theories of the hourglass spectrum built on short-range, quasi-static, stripe correlations
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Excitations in the field-induced quantum spin liquid state of α-RuCl3
The celebrated Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) is the paradigmatic example of a topological magnet with emergent excitations in the form of Majorana Fermions and gauge fluxes. Upon breaking of time-reversal symmetry, for example in an external magnetic field, these fractionalized quasiparticles acquire non-Abelian exchange statistics, an important ingredient for topologically protected quantum computing. Consequently, there has been enormous interest in exploring possible material realizations of Kitaev physics and several candidate materials have been put forward, recently including α-RuCl3. In the absence of a magnetic field this material orders at a finite temperature and exhibits low-energy spin wave excitations. However, at moderate energies, the spectrum is unconventional and the response shows evidence for fractional excitations. Here we use time-of-flight inelastic neutron scattering to show that the application of a sufficiently large magnetic field in the honeycomb plane suppresses the magnetic order and the spin waves, leaving a gapped continuum spectrum of magnetic excitations. Our comparisons of the scattering to the available calculations for a Kitaev QSL show that they are consistent with the magnetic field induced QSL phase.The work at ORNLâs Spallation Neutron Source and the High Flux Isotope Reactor was supported by the United States Department of Energy (US-DOE), Office of Science - Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Scientific User Facilities Division. Part of the research was supported by the US-DOE, Office of Science - BES, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division (P.K., C.A.B. and J-Q.Y.). D.M. and P.K. acknowledge support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundationâs EPiQS Initiative through Grant GBMF4416. The work at Dresden was in part supported by DFG grant SFB 1143 (J.K. and R.M.). J.K. is supported by the Marie Curie Programme under EC Grant agreements No.703697
Antiferromagnetic Order Induced by an Applied Magnetic Field in a High-Temperature Superconductor
One view of the cuprate high-transition temperature (high-Tc) superconductors
is that they are conventional superconductors where the pairing occurs between
weakly interacting quasiparticles, which stand in one-to-one correspondence
with the electrons in ordinary metals - although the theory has to be pushed to
its limit. An alternative view is that the electrons organize into collective
textures (e.g. charge and spin stripes) which cannot be mapped onto the
electrons in ordinary metals. The phase diagram, a complex function of various
parameters (temperature, doping and magnetic field), should then be approached
using quantum field theories of objects such as textures and strings, rather
than point-like electrons. In an external magnetic field, magnetic flux
penetrates type-II superconductors via vortices, each carrying one flux
quantum. The vortices form lattices of resistive material embedded in the
non-resistive superconductor and can reveal the nature of the ground state -
e.g. a conventional metal or an ordered, striped phase - which would have
appeared had superconductivity not intervened. Knowledge of this ground state
clearly provides the most appropriate starting point for a pairing theory. Here
we report that for one high-Tc superconductor, the applied field which imposes
the vortex lattice, also induces antiferromagnetic order. Ordinary
quasiparticle pictures cannot account for the nearly field-independent
antiferromagnetic transition temperature revealed by our measurements
Phase separation and suppression of critical dynamics at quantum transitions of itinerant magnets: MnSi and (SrCa)RuO
Quantum phase transitions (QPTs) have been studied extensively in correlated
electron systems. Characterization of magnetism at QPTs has, however, been
limited by the volume-integrated feature of neutron and magnetization
measurements and by pressure uncertainties in NMR studies using powderized
specimens. Overcoming these limitations, we performed muon spin relaxation
(SR) measurements which have a unique sensitivity to volume fractions of
magnetically ordered and paramagnetic regions, and studied QPTs from itinerant
heli/ferro magnet to paramagnet in MnSi (single-crystal; varying pressure) and
(SrCa)RuO (ceramic specimens; varying ). Our results
provide the first clear evidence that both cases are associated with
spontaneous phase separation and suppression of dynamic critical behavior,
revealed a slow but dynamic character of the ``partial order'' diffuse spin
correlations in MnSi above the critical pressure, and, combined with other
known results in heavy-fermion and cuprate systems, suggest a possibility that
a majority of QPTs involve first-order transitions and/or phase separation.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 21 authors, to appear in Nature Physic
Wave Vector Difference of Magnetic Bragg Reflections and Low Energy Magnetic Excitations in Charge-stripe Ordered La2NiO4.11
We report on the magnetism of charge-stripe ordered La2NiO4.11±0.01 by neutron scattering and ΌSR. On going towards zero energy transfer there is an observed wave vector offset in the centring of the magnetic excitations and magnetic Bragg reflections, meaning the excitations cannot be described as Goldstone modes of the magnetic order. Weak transverse field ΌSR measurements determine the magnetically order volume fraction is 87% from the two stripe twins, and the temperature evolution of the magnetic excitations is consistent with the low energy excitations coming from the magnetically ordered volume of the material. We will discuss how these results contrast with the proposed origin of a similar wave vector offset recently observed in a La-based cuprate, and possible origins of this effect in La2NiO4.11
Coexistence of static magnetism and superconductivity in SmFeAsO1-xFx as revealed by muon spin rotation
The recent observation of superconductivity with critical temperatures up to
55 K in the FeAs based pnictide compounds marks the first discovery of a non
copper-oxide based layered high-Tc superconductor (HTSC) [1-3]. It has raised
the suspicion that these new materials share a similar pairing mechanism to the
cuprates, since both exhibit superconductivity following charge doping of a
magnetic parent material. Here we present a muon spin rotation study on
SmFeAsO1-xFx (x=0-0.30), which shows that static magnetism persists well into
the superconducting regime. The analogy with the cuprates is quite surprising
since the parent compounds appear to have different magnetic ground states:
itinerant spin density wave for the pnictides contrasted with the Mott-Hubbard
insulator in the cuprates. Our findings suggest that proximity to magnetic
order and associated soft magnetic fluctuations, rather than the strong
electronic correlations in the vicinity of a Mott-Hubbard-metal-to-insulator
transition, may be the key ingredients of HTSC.Comment: Accepted in Nature Material
Efficient data reduction for time-of-flight neutron scattering experiments on single crystals
Magnetic excitations of the classical spin liquid MgCr2O4
We report a comprehensive inelastic neutron-scattering study of the frustrated pyrochlore antiferromagnet MgCr2O4 in its cooperative paramagnetic regime. Theoretical modeling yields a microscopic Heisenberg model with exchange interactions up to third-nearest neighbors, which quantitatively explains all the details of the dynamic magnetic response. Our work demonstrates that the magnetic excitations in paramagnetic MgCr2O4 are faithfully represented in the entire Brillouin zone by a theory of magnons propagating in a highly-correlated paramagnetic background. Our results also suggest that MgCr2O4 is proximate to a spiral spin-liquid phase distinct from the Coulomb phase, which has implications for the magneto-structural phase transition in MgCr2O4
Excitations in the field-induced quantum spin liquid state of alpha-RuCl3
The Kitaev model on a honeycomb lattice predicts a paradigmatic quantum spin liquid (QSL) exhibiting Majorana Fermion excitations. The insight that Kitaev physics might be realized in practice has stimulated investigations of candidate materials, recently including alpha-RuCl3. In all the systems studied to date, non-Kitaev interactions induce magnetic order at low temperature. However, in-plane magnetic fields of roughly 8 Tesla suppress the long-range magnetic order in alpha-RuCl3 raising the intriguing possibility of a field-induced QSL exhibiting non-Abelian quasiparticle excitations. Here we present inelastic neutron scattering in alpha-RuCl3 in an applied magnetic field. At a field of 8 Tesla, the spin waves characteristic of the ordered state vanish throughout the Brillouin zone. The remaining single dominant feature of the response is a broad continuum centered at the Gamma point, previously identified as a signature of fractionalized excitations. This provides compelling evidence that a field-induced QSL state has been achieved