TY - JOUR
T1 - Classical Spin Liquid Instability Driven by Off-Diagonal Exchange in Strong Spin-Orbit Magnets
AU - Rousochatzakis, Ioannis
AU - Perkins, Natalia B.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Physical Society.
PY - 2017/4/5
Y1 - 2017/4/5
N2 - We show that the off-diagonal exchange anisotropy drives Mott insulators with strong spin-orbit coupling to a classical spin liquid regime, characterized by an infinite number of ground states and Ising variables living on closed or open strings. Depending on the sign of the anisotropy, quantum fluctuations either fail to lift the degeneracy down to very low temperatures, or select noncoplanar magnetic states with unconventional spin correlations. The results apply to all 2D and 3D tricoordinated materials with bond-directional anisotropy and provide a consistent interpretation of the suppression of the x-ray magnetic circular dichroism signal reported recently for β-Li2IrO3 under pressure.
AB - We show that the off-diagonal exchange anisotropy drives Mott insulators with strong spin-orbit coupling to a classical spin liquid regime, characterized by an infinite number of ground states and Ising variables living on closed or open strings. Depending on the sign of the anisotropy, quantum fluctuations either fail to lift the degeneracy down to very low temperatures, or select noncoplanar magnetic states with unconventional spin correlations. The results apply to all 2D and 3D tricoordinated materials with bond-directional anisotropy and provide a consistent interpretation of the suppression of the x-ray magnetic circular dichroism signal reported recently for β-Li2IrO3 under pressure.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.147204
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.147204
M3 - Article
C2 - 28430457
AN - SCOPUS:85017160578
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 118
JO - Physical review letters
JF - Physical review letters
IS - 14
M1 - 147204
ER -