Low-temperature heat transport of spin-gapped quantum magnets

Abstract

This article reviews low-temperature heat transport studies of spin-gapped quantum magnets in the last few decades. Quantum magnets with small spins and low dimensionality exhibit a variety of novel phenomena. Among them, some systems are char-acteristic of having quantum-mechanism spin gap in their magnetic excitation spectra, including spin-Peierls systems, S = 1 Haldane chains, S = 1/2 spin ladders, and spin dimmers. In some particular spin-gapped systems, the XY-type antiferromagnetic state induced by magnetic field that closes the spin gap can be described as a magnon Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Heat transport is effective in probing the magnetic excitations and magnetic phase transitions, and has been extensively studied for the spin-gapped systems. A large and ballistic spin thermal conductivity was observed in the two-leg Heisenberg S = 1/2 ladder compounds. The characteristic of magnetic thermal transport of the Haldane chain systems is quite controversial on both the theoretical and experimental results. For the spin-Peierls system, the spin excitations can also act as heat carriers. In spin-dimer compounds, the magnetic excitations mainly play a role of scattering phonons. The magnetic excitations in the magnon BEC systems displayed dual roles, carrying heat or scattering phonons, in different materials.

30 pages, 23 figures, invited review for Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Low-temperature heat transport of CuFe${}_{1-x}$Ga${}_x$O${}_2$ ($x=$ 0--0.12) single crystals