Abstract
The pyrochlore compound TbTiO is known to remain in a spin-liquid state down to the lowest attainable temperature (0.05 K), whereas current theories predict it should order into an antiferromagnetic structure. A number of models have been developed in order to resolve this discrepancy, but none of them could obtain a spin-liquid ground state. We present here a tentative explanation for the lack of magnetic order in TbTiO based on the presence of a Jahn-Teller-like distortion from the local trigonal symmetry and on the physics of the two-singlet system coupled by exchange.
- Received 17 May 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.84.184409
©2011 American Physical Society