Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 42: Correlated Electrons: Frustrated Magnets - Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling 2

TT 42.5: Talk

Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 10:30–10:45, HSZ 304

Electronic structure of α-RuCl₃ from electron spectroscopy — •Andreas Koitzsch¹, Carsten Habenicht¹, Eric Müller¹, Martin Knupfer¹, Bernd Büchner^1,2, Hem Kandpal^1,3, Jeroen van den Brink^1,4, Domenic Nowak⁵, Anna Isaeva⁵, and Thomas Doert⁵ — ¹IFW Dresden, Germany — ²Institute for Solid State Physics, TU Dresden, Germany — ³Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India — ⁴Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Dresden, Germany — ⁵Department of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, TU Dresden, Germany

Novel ground states might be realized in honeycomb lattices with strong spin–orbit coupling. Here we study the electronic structure of α-RuCl₃, in which the Ru ions are in a d⁵ configuration and form a honeycomb lattice, by angle-resolved photoemission, x-ray photoemission and electron energy loss spectroscopy supported by density functional theory and multiplet calculations. We find that α-RuCl₃ is a Mott insulator with significant spin-orbit coupling, whose low energy electronic structure is naturally mapped onto J_eff states. This makes α-RuCl₃ a promising candidate for the realization of Kitaev physics. Relevant electronic parameters such as the Hubbard energy U, the crystal field splitting 10Dq and the charge transfer energy Δ are evaluated.