Abstract
It is widely believed that magnetic excitations become increasingly incoherent as the temperature is raised due to random collisions which limit their lifetime. This picture is based on spin-wave calculations for gapless magnets in 2 and 3 dimensions and is observed experimentally as a symmetric Lorentzian broadening in energy. Here, we investigate a three-dimensional dimer antiferromagnet and find unexpectedly that the broadening is asymmetric—indicating that far from thermal decoherence, the excitations behave collectively like a strongly correlated gas. This result suggests that a temperature activated coherent state of quasiparticles is not confined to special cases like the highly dimerized spin- chain but is found generally in dimerized antiferromagnets of all dimensionalities and perhaps gapped magnets in general.
- Received 11 April 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.127206
© 2012 American Physical Society