Lack of Evidence for a Singlet Crystal Field Ground State in the Tb2Ti2O7 Magnetic Pyrochlore

Abstract

We present new high resolution inelastic neutron scattering data on the candidate spin liquid Tb2Ti2O7. We find that there is no evidence for a zero field splitting of the ground state doublet within the 0.2 K resolution of the instrument. This result contrasts with a pair of recent works on Tb2Ti2O7 claiming that the spin liquid behavior can be attributed to a 2 K split singlet-singlet single-ion spectrum at low energies. We also reconsider the entropy argument presented in Chapuis {\it et al.} as further evidence of a singlet-singlet crystal field spectrum. We arrive at the conclusion that estimates of the low temperature residual entropy drawn from heat capacity measurements are a poor guide to the single ion spectrum without understanding the nature of the correlations.

4 pages, 3 figure. Submitted to Physical Review B

References in corpus (5)

• Dynamically-Induced Frustration as a Route to a Quantum Spin Ice State in Tb2Ti2O7 via Virtual Crystal Field Excitations and Quantum Many-Body Effects
• Structural Fluctuations in the Spin Liquid State of Tb2Ti2O7
• Field Induced Order and Spin Waves in the Pyrochlore Antiferromagnet Tb2Ti2O7
• Understanding Paramagnetic Spin Correlations in the Spin-Liquid Pyrochlore Tb2Ti2O7
• Magnetoelastics of a spin liquid: X-ray diffraction studies of Tb2Ti2O7 in pulsed magnetic fields

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• Disordered Route to the Coulomb Quantum Spin Liquid: Random Transverse Fields on Spin Ice in Pr${}_2$Zr${}_2$O${}_7$
• Magnetoelastic excitations in the pyrochlore spin liquid Tb${}_2$Ti${}_2$O${}_7$
• Long-range order and spin-liquid states of polycrystalline Tb${}_{2+x}$Ti${}_{2-x}$O${}_{7+y}$
• Antiferromagnetic Spin Ice Correlations at (1/2,1/2,1/2) in the Ground State of the Pyrochlore Magnet Tb2Ti2O7
• Spin liquid correlations, anisotropic exchange and symmetry breaking in Tb2Ti2O7
• Quantum spin fluctuations in the spin liquid state of Tb2Ti2O7
• Low-temperature magnetization in geometrically frustrated Tb2Ti2O7
• Neutron spectroscopic study of crystal field excitations in Tb2Ti2O7 and Tb2Sn2O7
• Vibrating-coil magnetometry of the spin liquid properties of Tb2Ti2O7
• Spin dynamics in the ordered spin ice Tb${}_2$Sn${}_2$O${}_7$
• Temperature and Magnetic Field Dependence of Spin Ice Correlations in the Pyrochlore Magnet Tb2Ti2O7
• Multiflavor Mott insulators in quantum materials and ultracold atoms
• Sample independence of magnetoelastic excitations in the rare earth pyrochlore Tb2Ti2O7
• Mesoscopic correlations in Tb2Ti2O7 spin liquid
• Upper branch magnetism in quantum magnets: Collapses of excited levels and emergent selection rules
• Continuum excitation and pseudospin wave in quantum spin-liquid and quadrupole ordered states of Tb${}_{2+x}$Ti${}_{2-x}$O${}_{7+y}$
• Low Energy Magneto-optics of Tb${}_2$Ti${}_2$O${}_7$ in [111] Magnetic Field
• Melting of spin ice state and development of fifth order susceptibility with magnetic field in pyrochlore Tb2Sn2O7
• Universal excitonic superexchange in spin-orbit-coupled Mott insulators