Ultralow-temperature heat transport in the quantum spin liquid candidate Ca10Cr7O28 with bilayer kagome lattice

Abstract

Recently, a novel material with bilayer kagome lattice Ca${}_{10}$Cr${}_7$O${}_{28}$ was proposed to be a gapless quantum spin liquid, due to the lack of long-range magnetic order and the observation of broad diffuse excitations. Here, we present the ultralow-temperature thermal conductivity measurements on single crystals of Ca${}_{10}$Cr${}_7$O${}_{28}$ to detect its low-lying magnetic excitations. At finite temperatures, with increasing the magnetic fields, the thermal conductivity exhibits a clear dip around 6 T, which may correspond to a crossover in the magnetic ground state. At the zero-temperature limit, no residual linear term is found at any fields, indicating the absence of gapless itinerant fermionic excitations. Therefore, if the spinons do exist, they are either localized or gapped. In the gapped case, the fitting of our data gives a small gap $\Delta \sim$ 0.27(2) K. These results put strong constraints on the theoretical description of the ground state in this quantum spin liquid candidate.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures, accepted by Physical Review B

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Quantum Spin Liquids
• Possible itinerant excitations and quantum spin state transitions in the effective spin-1/2 triangular-lattice antiferromagnet Na${}_2$BaCo(PO${}_4$)${}_2$
• Heat Transport in Herbertsmithite: Can a Quantum Spin Liquid Survive Disorder?
• Thermal Transport for Probing Quantum Materials
• Magnetic properties and magnetic structure of the frustrated quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnet SrCuTe${}_2$O${}_6$
• Anomalous Bilayer Quantum Hall Effect
• Two-stage evolution of magnetic correlations in spiral spin liquid material, Ca${}_{10}$Cr${}_7$O${}_{28}$
• Low-temperature specific heat and heat transport of Tb${}_2$Ti${}_{2-x}$Zr${}_x$O${}_7$ single crystals
• Robust spin liquid state against magnetic-dilution in the bi-layer Kagome material Ca${}_{10}$Cr${}_7$O${}_{28}$
• Strong coupling of lattice and orbital excitations in quantum magnet Ca${}_{10}$Cr${}_7$O${}_{28}$: Anomalous temperature dependence of Raman phonons