Collective magnetic Higgs excitation in a pyrochlore ruthenate

Abstract

The emergence of scalar Higgs-type amplitude modes in systems where symmetry is spontaneously broken has been a highly successful, paradigmatic description of phase transitions, with implications ranging from high-energy particle physics to low-energy condensed matter systems. Here, we uncover two successive high temperature phase transitions in the pyrochlore magnet Nd${}_2$Ru${}_2$O${}_7$ at $T_{\mathrm{N}}=147$ K and $T^{\ast }=97$ K, that lead to giant phonon instabilities and culminate in the emergence of a highly coherent excitation. This coherent excitation, distinct from other phonons and from conventional magnetic modes, stabilizes at a low energy of 3 meV. We assign it to a collective Higgs-type amplitude mode, that involves bond energy modulations of the Ru${}_4$ tetrahedra. Its striking two-fold symmetry, incompatible with the underlying crystal structure, highlights the possibility of multiple entangled broken symmetries.

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Uncovering the Hidden Ferroaxial Density Wave as the Origin of the Axial Higgs Mode in RTe${}_3$
• Linear scaling relationship of Néel temperature and dominant magnons in pyrochlore ruthenates
• Using magnetic dynamics to measure the spin gap in a candidate Kitaev material