Experimental Evidence for the Spiral Spin Liquid in LiYbO${}_2$

Abstract

Spiral spin liquids are an exotic class of correlated paramagnets with an enigmatic magnetic ground state composed of a degenerate manifold of fluctuating spin spirals. Experimental realisations of the spiral spin liquid are scarce, mainly due to the prominence of structural distortions in candidate materials that can trigger order-by-disorder transitions to more conventionally ordered magnetic ground states. Expanding the pool of candidate materials that may host a spiral spin liquid is therefore crucial to realising this novel magnetic ground state and understanding its robustness against perturbations that arise in real materials. Here, we show that the material LiYbO${}_2$ is the first experimental realisation of a spiral spin liquid predicted to emerge from the $J_1$-$J_2$ Heisenberg model on an elongated diamond lattice. Through a complementary combination of high-resolution and diffuse neutron magnetic scattering studies on a polycrystalline sample, we demonstrate that LiYbO${}_2$ fulfils the requirements for the experimental realisation of the spiral spin liquid and reconstruct single-crystal diffuse neutron magnetic scattering maps that reveal continuous spiral spin contours -- a characteristic experimental hallmark of this exotic magnetic phase.

6 pages, 5 figures, accepted PRL

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Magnetic properties and spin dynamics in a spin-orbit driven Jeff= 1/2 triangular lattice antiferromagnet
• Spiral spin liquid in a frustrated honeycomb antiferromagnet: A single-crystal study of GdZnPO
• Spiral Spin Liquid Noise
• Observation of the spiral spin liquid in a triangular-lattice material
• Disorder effects in spiral spin liquids: Long-range spin textures, Friedel-like oscillations, and spiral spin glasses
• Magnetic properties of the spiral spin liquid and surrounding phases in the square lattice XY model
• Giant Magnetocaloric Effect in a Honeycomb Spiral Spin-Liquid Candidate
• Magnetoelastic coupling in the stretched diamond lattice of TbTaO${}_4$
• Frustrated magnets in the limit of infinite dimensions: dynamics and disorder-free glass transition
• Frustrated $J_1-J_2$ Diamond Lattice Antiferromagnet Co${}_2$Ti${}_3$O${}_8$ with a Vacancy-ordered Spinel Structure Synthesized via a Topochemical Reaction
• Codimension-Two Spiral Spin-Liquid in the Effective Honeycomb-Lattice Compound Cs${}_3$Fe${}_2$Cl${}_9$