Anisotropic exchange coupling and ground state phase diagram of Kitaev compound YbOCl

Abstract

Rare-earth chalcohalide REChX (RE = rare earth; Ch = O, S, Se, Te; X = F, Cl, Br, I) is a newly reported family of Kitaev spin liquid candidates. The family offers a platform where a strong spin-orbit coupling meets a van der Waals layered and undistorted honeycomb spin lattice, which outputs highly anisotropic exchange couplings required by the Kitaev model. YbOCl is the first single crystal of the family we grew, with a size up to ~ 15 mm. We have performed magnetization and high magnetic field electron spin resonance measurements from 2 to 300 K. We develop the mean-field scenario for the anisotropic spin system, with which we are able to well describe the experiments and reliably determine the fundamental parameters. The self-consistent simulations give the anisotropic spin-exchange interactions of $J_{\pm }$ (~ -0.3 K) and $J_{zz}$ (~ 1.6 K), and g factors of $g_{ab}$ (~ 3.4) and $g_c$ (~ 2.9). Based on the spin-exchange interactions, we employ the exact diagonalization method to work out the ground state phase diagram of YbOCl in terms of the off-diagonal exchange couplings. The phase diagram hosting rich magnetic phases including the spin-disordered one, sheds light on the novel magnetic properties of the family, particularly the Kitaev physics.

11 pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Ground State Magnetic Structure and Magnetic Field Effects in the Layered Honeycomb Antiferromagnet YbOCl
• Spiral spin liquid in a frustrated honeycomb antiferromagnet: A single-crystal study of GdZnPO
• Emergent quantum Majorana metal from a chiral spin liquid
• Deriving quantum spin model for a zigzag-chain ytterbium magnet with anisotropic exchange interactions
• Magnetic properties of a spin-orbit entangled Jeff = 1/2 honeycomb lattice
• Crystalline electric field excitations and their nonlinear splitting under magnetic fields in YbOCl
• Theory of rare-earth Kramers magnets on a Shastry-Sutherland lattice: dimer phases in presence of strong spin-orbit coupling
• High-field quantum spin liquid transitions and angle-field phase diagram of Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Dominant Kitaev interaction and field-induced quantum phase transitions in triangular-lattice KCeSe2
• Gapless spinon excitations emerging from a multipolar transverse field in the triangular-lattice Ising antiferromagnet NaTmSe2
• Anomalous enhancement of magnetism by nonmagnetic doping in the honeycomb-lattice antiferromagnet ErOCl
• Field-induced multipolar character in the dipolar ground state of the honeycomb rare-earth chalcohalide NdOF