| CONDENSED MATTER: ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE, ELECTRICAL, MAGNETIC, AND OPTICAL PROPERTIES |
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Gapped Spin-1/2 Spinon Excitations in a New Kagome Quantum Spin Liquid Compound Cu$_3$Zn(OH)$_6$FBr
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| Zili Feng1†, Zheng Li1,2†, Xin Meng1, Wei Yi1, Yuan Wei1, Jun Zhang3, Yan-Cheng Wang1, Wei Jiang4, Zheng Liu5, Shiyan Li3,6, Feng Liu4, Jianlin Luo1,2,7, Shiliang Li1,2,7, Guo-qing Zheng1,8**, Zi Yang Meng1**, Jia-Wei Mei9,4,10**, Youguo Shi1** |
1Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190
2School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190
3State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Department of Physics, and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
4Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, USA
5Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084
6Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing 210093
7Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100190
8Department of Physics, Okayama University, Okayama 700-8530, Japan
9Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, and Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055
10Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing 100193 |
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| Cite this article: |
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Zili Feng, Zheng Li, Xin Meng et al 2017 Chin. Phys. Lett. 34 077502 |
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Abstract We report a new kagome quantum spin liquid candidate Cu$_3$Zn(OH)$_6$FBr, which does not experience any phase transition down to 50 mK, more than three orders lower than the antiferromagnetic Curie-Weiss temperature ($\sim$200 K). A clear gap opening at low temperature is observed in the uniform spin susceptibility obtained from $^{19}$F nuclear magnetic resonance measurements. We observe the characteristic magnetic field dependence of the gap as expected for fractionalized spin-1/2 spinon excitations. Our experimental results provide firm evidence for spin fractionalization in a topologically ordered spin system, resembling charge fractionalization in the fractional quantum Hall state.
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Received: 15 June 2017
Published: 19 June 2017
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| PACS: |
75.10.Kt
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(Quantum spin liquids, valence bond phases and related phenomena)
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67.30.er
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(Magnetic properties, NMR)
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05.30.Pr
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(Fractional statistics systems)
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75.40.Cx
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(Static properties (order parameter, static susceptibility, heat capacities, critical exponents, etc.))
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| Fund: Supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant Nos 2016YFA0300502, 2016YFA0300503, 2016YFA0300604, 2016YF0300300 and 2016YFA0300802, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11421092, 11474330, 11574359, 11674406, 11374346 and 11674375, the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) under Grant No 2015CB921304, the National Thousand-Young-Talents Program of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant Nos XDB07020000, XDB07020200 and XDB07020300. The work in Utah is supported by DOE-BES under Grant No DE-FG02-04ER46148.
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