CMSA JOINT QUANTUM MATTER IN MATH & PHYSICS and STRONGLY CORRELATED QUANTUM MATERIALS & HIGH-TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTORS SEMINAR: Oscillations in the thermal conductivity of a spin liquid*

CMSA EVENTS

Speaker:

Nai Phuan Ong - Princeton University

The layered honeycomb magnet alpha-RuCl3 orders below 7 K in a zigzag phase in zero field. An in-plane magnetic field H||a suppresses the zigzag order at 7 Tesla, leaving a spin-disordered phase widely believed to be a quantum spin liquid (QSL) that extends to ~12 T. We have observed oscillations in the longitudinal thermal conductivity Kxx vs. H from 0.4 to 4 K. The oscillations are periodic in 1/H (with a break-in-slope at 7 T). The amplitude function is maximal in the QSL phase (7 --11.5 T). I will describe a benchmark for crystalline disorder, the reproducibility and intrinsic nature of the oscillations, and discuss implications for the QSL state. I will also show detailed data on the thermal Hall conductivity Kxy measured from 0.4 K to 10 K and comment on recent half-quantization results.

*Czajka et al., Nature Physics 17, 915 (2021).

Collaborators: Czajka, Gao, Hirschberger, Lampen Kelley, Banerjee, Yan, Mandrus and Nagler.

https://harvard.zoom.us/j/977347126
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