Classical Spin Liquid on the Maximally Frustrated Honeycomb Lattice

J. Rehn, Arnab Sen, Kedar Damle, and R. Moessner
Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 167201 – Published 11 October 2016
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Abstract

We show that the honeycomb Heisenberg antiferromagnet with J1/2=J2=J3, where J1, J2, and J3 are first-, second-, and third-neighbor couplings, respectively, forms a classical spin liquid with pinch-point singularities in the structure factor at the Brillouin zone corners. Upon dilution with nonmagnetic ions, fractionalized degrees of freedom carrying 1/3 of the free moment emerge. Their effective description in the limit of low temperature is that of spins randomly located on a triangular lattice, with a frustrated sublattice-sensitive interaction of long-ranged logarithmic form. The XY version of this magnet exhibits nematic thermal order by disorder. This comes with a clear experimental diagnostic in neutron scattering, which turns out to apply also to the case of the celebrated planar order by disorder of the kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet.

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  • Received 6 October 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.167201

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

J. Rehn1, Arnab Sen2, Kedar Damle3, and R. Moessner1

  • 1Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, 01187 Dresden, Germany
  • 2Department of Theoretical Physics, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata 700032, India
  • 3Department of Theoretical Physics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400 005, India

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Issue

Vol. 117, Iss. 16 — 14 October 2016

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