Signatures of a magnetic field-induced unconventional nematic liquid in the frustrated and anisotropic spin-chain cuprate LiCuSbO4

Abstract

Modern theories of quantum magnetism predict exotic multipolar states in weakly interacting strongly frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor (NN) inchain exchange in high magnetic fields. Experimentally these states remained elusive so far. Here we report strong indications of a magnetic field-induced nematic liquid arising above a field of ~13 T in the edge-sharing chain cuprate LiSbCuO4 ≡ LiCuSbO4. This interpretation is based on the observation of a field induced spin-gap in the measurements of the 7Li NMR spin relaxation rate T1−1 as well as a contrasting field-dependent power-law behavior of T1−1 vs. T and is further supported by static magnetization and ESR data. An underlying theoretical microscopic approach favoring a nematic scenario is based essentially on the NN XYZ exchange anisotropy within a model for frustrated spin-1/2 chains and is investigated by the DMRG technique. The employed exchange parameters are justified qualitatively by electronic structure calculations for LiCuSbO4.

Description
Keywords
Magnetic properties and materials, Quantum fluids and solids
Citation
Grafe, H.-J., Nishimoto, S., Iakovleva, M., Vavilova, E., Spillecke, L., Alfonsov, A., et al. (2017). Signatures of a magnetic field-induced unconventional nematic liquid in the frustrated and anisotropic spin-chain cuprate LiCuSbO4. 7. https://doi.org//10.1038/s41598-017-06525-0
License
CC BY 4.0 Unported