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Emergence of spin singlets with inhomogeneous gaps in the kagome lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnets Zn-barlowite and herbertsmithite

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 1109–1113 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet formed by frustrated spins arranged in a lattice of corner-sharing triangles is a prime candidate for hosting a quantum spin liquid (QSL) ground state consisting of entangled spin singlets1. However, the existence of various competing states makes a convincing theoretical prediction of the QSL ground state difficult2, calling for experimental clues from model materials. The kagome lattice materials Zn-barlowite (ZnCu3(OD)6FBr)3,4,5 and herbertsmithite (ZnCu3(OD)6Cl2)6,7,8,9,10 do not exhibit long-range order and are considered the best realizations of the kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet known so far. Here we use 63Cu nuclear quadrupole resonance combined with the inverse Laplace transform11,12,13 to locally probe the inhomogeneity of delicate quantum ground states affected by disorder14,15,16,17. We present direct evidence for the gradual emergence of spin singlets with spatially varying excitation gaps, but even at temperatures far below the super-exchange energy scale their fraction is limited to ~60% of the total spins. Theoretical models18,19 need to incorporate the role of disorder to account for the observed inhomogeneously gapped behaviour.

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Fig. 1: Spin singlets in the kagome lattice.
Fig. 2: 1/T1 and its distribution P(1/T1).
Fig. 3: Distribution of the Cu spin environment.
Fig. 4: Singlet fraction.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

T.I. thanks T. Sakai, K. Uematsu, R. R. P. Singh, I. Kimchi, P. A. Lee and S. Sachdev for helpful communications, and P. Dube and R. Giannetta for technical assistance. The work at McMaster was supported by NSERC (T.I.). P.M.S. was supported by the Rice University Consortium for Processes in Porous Media. The work at Stanford and SLAC (sample synthesis and characterization) was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515 (Y.S.L. and J. Wen). R.W.S. was supported by the US Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program as well as an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE-1656518).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Jiaming Wang, Weishi Yuan & Takashi Imai

  2. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Philip M. Singer

  3. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Rebecca W. Smaha, Wei He, Jiajia Wen & Young S. Lee

  4. Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rebecca W. Smaha

  5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Wei He

  6. Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Young S. Lee

  7. Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Takashi Imai

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Contributions

T.I. and Y.S.L. conceived the project. R.W.S., W.H., J. Wen and Y.S.L. synthesized and characterized the samples. J. Wang, W.Y., P.M.S. and T.I. carried out the NMR measurements and data analysis. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Takashi Imai.

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Peer review information Nature Physics thanks Martin Klanjsek and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Discussion and Figs. 1–9.

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Wang, J., Yuan, W., Singer, P.M. et al. Emergence of spin singlets with inhomogeneous gaps in the kagome lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnets Zn-barlowite and herbertsmithite. Nat. Phys. 17, 1109–1113 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01310-3

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