SKM 2021 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 18: Frustrated Magnets

TT 18.5: Talk

Thursday, September 30, 2021, 11:15–11:30, H7

Anisotropy of the magnetoelastic coupling investigated in the Kitaev material RuCl₃ — •Vilmos Kocsis¹, David A. S. Kaib², Kira Riedl², Sebastian Gass¹, Paula Lampen-Kelley^3,4, David G. Mandrus^3,4, Stephen E. Nagler⁴, Nicolas P. Rodriguez¹, Kornelius Nielsch¹, Roser Valenti², Bernd Büchner¹, and Anja U. B. Wolter¹ — ¹IFW-Dresden, Dresden, Germany — ²Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany — ³University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA — ⁴Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, USA

The Kitaev material α-RuCl₃ is among the most promising candidates to host a quantum spin-liquid state. Recent investigations have revealed the importance of the magnetoelastic coupling and the magnetic anisotropy in α-RuCl₃. In this combined theoretical and experimental research we investigate the anisotropic magnetic and magnetoelastic properties for magnetic fields applied along the main crystallographic axes as well as for fields canted out of the honeycomb plane. We found that the magnetostriction anisotropy is unusually large compared to the anisotropy of the magnetization, which is related to the strong magnetoelastic Γ′-type coupling in our ab-initio derived model. We observed large, non-symmetric anisotropy in the magnetic and magnetoelastic properties for magnetic fields canted out of the honeycomb ab-plane in opposite directions, namely for fields canted towards the +c^* or −c^* axes, respectively). The observed directional anisotropy is related to the uniformly aligned Cl₆ octahedra around the magnetic ion Ru³⁺.