Rare-earth chalcohalides: A family of van der Waals layered Kitaev spin liquid candidates

Abstract

Kitaev spin liquid (KSL) system has attracted tremendous attention in past years because of its fundamental significance in condensed matter physics and promising applications in fault-tolerant topological quantum computation. Material realization of such a system remains a major challenge in the field due to the unusual configuration of anisotropic spin interactions, though great effort has been made before. Here we reveal that rare-earth chalcohalides REChX (RE=rare earth, Ch=O, S, Se, Te, X=F, Cl, Br, I) can serve as a family of KSL candidates. Most family members have the typical SmSI-type structure with a high symmetry of R-3m and rare-earth magnetic ions form an undistorted honeycomb lattice. The strong spin-orbit coupling of 4f electrons intrinsically offers anisotropic spin interactions as required by Kitaev model. We have grown the crystals of YbOCl and synthesized the polycrystals of SmSI, ErOF, HoOF and DyOF, and made careful structural characterizations. We carry out magnetic and heat capacity measurements down to 1.8 K and find no obvious magnetic transition in all the samples but DyOF. The van der Waals interlayer coupling highlights the true two-dimensionality of the family which is vital for the exact realization of Abelian/non-Abelian anyons, and the graphene-like feature will be a prominent advantage for developing miniaturized devices. The family is expected to act as an inspiring material platform for the exploration of KSL physics.

6 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• DyOCl: a rare-earth based two-dimensional van der Waals material with strong magnetic anisotropy
• Anisotropic exchange coupling and ground state phase diagram of Kitaev compound YbOCl
• Spiral-spin-liquid behaviors and persistent reciprocal kagomé structure in frustrated van der Waals magnets and beyond
• Ground State Magnetic Structure and Magnetic Field Effects in the Layered Honeycomb Antiferromagnet YbOCl
• Magnon Condensation in Dimerized Antiferromagnets with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Crystalline electric field excitations and their nonlinear splitting under magnetic fields in YbOCl
• Effective Model for Rare-earth Kitaev Materials and its Classical Monte Carlo Simulation
• High-field quantum spin liquid transitions and angle-field phase diagram of Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Interplay of Kitaev Interaction and Off-diagonal Exchanges: Exotic Phases and Quantum Phase Diagrams
• Static and dynamical magnetic properties of the extended Kitaev-Heisenberg model with spin vacancies
• Magnetic properties of van der Waals layered single crystals DyOBr and SmOCl
• Magnetodielectric Properties in Two Dimensional Magnetic Insulators
• Anomalous enhancement of magnetism by nonmagnetic doping in the honeycomb-lattice antiferromagnet ErOCl
• The Role of the Third Dimension in Searching Majorana Fermions in $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ via Phonons
• Field-induced multipolar character in the dipolar ground state of the honeycomb rare-earth chalcohalide NdOF