In condensed matter systems, formation of long-range order (LRO) is often accompanied by new excitations. However, in many geometrically frustrated magnetic systems, conventional LRO is suppressed, while non-trivial spin correlations are still observed. A natural question to ask is then what is the nature of the excitations in this highly correlated state without broken symmetry? Frequently, applying a symmetry breaking field stabilizes excitations whose properties reflect certain aspects of the anomalous state without LRO. Here we report a THz spectroscopy study of novel excitations in quantum spin ice Yb2Ti2O7 under a <001> directed magnetic field. At large positive fields, both right- and left-handed magnon and two-magnon-like excitations are observed. The g-factors of these excitations are dramatically enhanced in the low-field limit, showing a crossover of these states into features consistent with the quantum string-like excitations proposed to exist in quantum spin ice in small <001> fields.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms5970DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

quantum spin
12
spin ice
12
excitations
8
excitations quantum
8
spin
5
low-energy electrodynamics
4
electrodynamics novel
4
novel spin
4
spin excitations
4
quantum
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!