Field-induced long-range magnetic order in the spin-singlet ground state system YbAl3C3: Neutron diffraction study

Abstract

The $4f$-electron system YbAl${}_3$C${}_3$ with a non-magnetic spin-dimer ground state has been studied by neutron diffraction in an applied magnetic field. A long-range magnetic order involving both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic components has been revealed above the critical field H${}_C\sim$ 6T at temperature T=0.05K. The magnetic structure indicates that the geometrical frustration of the prototype hexagonal lattice is not fully relieved in the low-temperature orthorhombic phase. The suppression of magnetic ordering by the remanent frustration is the key factor stabilizing the non-magnetic singlet ground state in zero field. Temperature dependent measurements in the applied field H=12T revealed that the long-range ordering persists up to temperatures significantly higher than the spin gap indicating that this phase is not directly related to the singlet-triplet excitation. Combining our neutron diffraction results with the previously published phase diagram, we support the existence of an intermediate disordered phase as the first excitation from the non-magnetic singlet ground state. Based on our results, we propose YbAl${}_3$C${}_3$ as a new material for studying the quantum phase transitions of heavy-fermion metals under the influence of geometrical frustration.

References in corpus (4)

• Bose-Einstein Condensation in Magnetic Insulators
• Frustration and the Kondo effect in heavy fermion materials
• Destruction of Kondo effect in cubic heavy fermion compound Ce3Pd20Si6
• Magnetic field tuned quantum criticality of heavy fermion system YbPtBi

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• Phase diagram of Kondo-Heisenberg model on honeycomb lattice with geometrical frustration
• Structural Domain Switching by Magnetic Fields in RAl${}_3$C${}_3$ (R=Rare Earth)
• Magnon Bose-Einstein Condensation and Superconductivity in a Frustrated Kondo Lattice
• Lifshitz Transition in Triangular Lattice Kondo-Heisenberg Model