APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 84 » Issue 16

Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3718 - 3721 (2000)

Local Spin Resonance and Spin-Peierls-like Phase Transition in a Geometrically Frustrated Antiferromagnet

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S.-H. Lee1,2, C. Broholm3,2, T. H. Kim4 *, W. Ratcliff, II4, and S-W. Cheong4,5
1University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
2NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899
3Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218
4Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854
5Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974

Received 30 August 1999

Inelastic magnetic neutron scattering reveals a localized spin resonance at 4.5 meV in the ordered phase of the geometrically frustrated cubic antiferromagnet ZnCr2O4. The resonance develops abruptly from quantum critical fluctuations upon cooling through a first order transition to a co-planar antiferromagnet at Tc  =  12.5(5) K. We argue that this transition is a three dimensional analog of the spin-Peierls transition.


©2000 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v84/p3718
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.3718
PACS: 76.50.+g, 75.40.Gb, 75.50.Ee

* Present address: Francis Bitter Magnet Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.

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