Proximate Quantum Spin Liquid on Designer Lattice.

Liu, Xiaoran; Singh, Sobhit; Drouin-Touchette, Victor; Asaba, Tomoya; Brewer, Jess; Zhang, Qinghua; Cao, Yanwei; Pal, Banabir et al. · Nano Lett · 2021

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Complementary to bulk synthesis, here we propose a designer lattice with extremely high magnetic frustration and demonstrate the possible realization of a quantum spin liquid state from both experiments and theoretical calculations. In an ultrathin (111) CoCr<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> slice composed of three triangular and one kagome cation planes, the absence of a spin ordering or freezing transition is demonstrated down to 0.03 K, in the presence of strong antiferromagnetic correlations in the energy scale of 30 K between Co and Cr sublattices, leading to the frustration factor of ∼1000. Persisting spin fluctuations are observed at low temperatures via low-energy muon spin relaxation. Our calculations further demonstrate the emergence of highly degenerate magnetic ground states at the 0 K limit, due to the competition among multiply altered exchange interactions. These results collectively indicate the realization of a proximate quantum spin liquid state on the synthetic lattice.