Dresden 2017 – scientific programme
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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 42: Correlated Electrons: Frustrated Magnets - Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling 2
TT 42.6: Talk
Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 10:45–11:00, HSZ 304
Field-induced changes of the thermodynamic properties of the honeycomb system α-RuCl3 — •A.U.B. Wolter1, L.T. Corredor1, M. Geyer1, K. Nenkov1, R. Hühne1, S.-H. Do3, K.-Y. Choi3, Y.S. Kwon4, A. Isaeva5, D. Nowak5, T. Doert5, L. Janssen6, M. Vojta6, and B. Büchner1,2 — 1Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, IFW Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany — 2Institute for Solid State Physics, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany — 3Department of Physics, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 156-756, Republic of Korea — 4Department of Emerging Materials Science, DGIST, Daegu 711-873, Republic of Korea — 5Department of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany — 6Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
α-RuCl3 with its honeycomb lattice and strong spin-orbit coupling has been at the center of attention in the last two years, since it has been proposed as a prime candidate to study fractionalized Kitaev physics despite its zigzag antiferromagnetic ground state. The thermal fractionalization of quantum spins in a Kitaev model has been predicted to be experimentally observable in e.g. the specific heat, and transport properties. We studied the thermodynamic behavior of this system by means of a detailed specific heat investigation in applied magnetic fields up to 14 T. Our studies reveal an angular dependent suppression of the long-range magnetic order in applied magnetic fields, as well as a pronounced suppression of the specific heat at low temperatures and high fields, suggesting the appearance of a gapped state. This scenario is discussed in light of a detailed entropy analysis in both regimes.