We report the magnetic and electronic properties of the bilayer ruthenate Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$ upon Fe substitution for Ru. We find that Sr$_3$(Ru$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$)$_2$O$_7$ shows a spin-glass-like phase below 4 K for $x$ = 0.01 and commensurate E-type antiferromagnetically ordered insulating ground state characterized by the propagation vector $q_c$ = (0.25 0.25 0) for $x$ $\geq$ 0.03, respectively, in contrast to the paramagnetic metallic state in the parent compound with strong spin fluctuations occurring at wave vectors $q$ = (0.09 0 0) and (0.25 0 0). The observed antiferromagnetic ordering is quasi-two-dimensional with very short correlation length along the $c$ axis, a feature similar to the Mn-doped Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$. Our results suggest that this ordered ground state is associated with the intrinsic magnetic instability in the pristine compound, which can be readily tipped by the local magnetic coupling between the 3$d$ orbitals of the magnetic dopants and Ru 4$d$ orbitals.
The cubic double perovskite Ba$_2$YIrO$_6$ has been investigated by the local probe techniques nuclear magnetic resonance ($^{89}$Y NMR) and muon spin rotation (muSR). Both methods confirm the absence of magnetic long-range order in this compound but find evidence for diluted localized paramagnetic moments. NMR spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T1 measurements suggest a slowing down of localized spin moments at low temperatures. An increase of the muSR spin-lattice relaxation rate lambda confirms the presence of weak magnetism in Ba$_2$YIrO$_6$ . However, these findings cannot be explained by the…
We have performed Electron Spin Resonance measurements on single crystals of the doped spin-Peierls compounds CuGe$_{1-y}$Si$_y$O$_3$ and Cu$_{1-x}$M$_x$GeO$_3$ with M = Zn, Mg, Ni ($x, y\leq 0.1$). The first part of our experiments was performed in the paramagnetic and spin-Peierls phases at 9.5, 95 and 190 GHz. All non-magnetic impurities (Si, Zn and Mg) were found to hardly affect the position and linewidth of the single line resonance, in spite of the moment formation due to the broken chains. In contrast to Si, Zn and Mg-doping, the presence of Ni (S = 1) at low concentration induces a sp…
We consider a defect in a strongly correlated host metal and discuss, within a slave boson mean field formalism for the $t-t'-J$ model, the formation of an induced paramagnetic moment which is extended over nearby sites. We study in particular an impurity in a metallic band, suitable for modelling the optimally doped cuprates, in a regime where the impurity moment is paramagnetic. The form of the local susceptibility as a function of temperature and doping is found to agree well with recent NMR experiments, without including screening processes leading to the Kondo effect.
We have investigated the dilute magnetic impurity effect on the magnetic properties of a quantum spin liquid candidate Ba3ZnRu2O9 and a spin gapped compound Ba3CaRu2O9. The magnetic ground state of each compound stands against 2% substitution of magnetic impurities for Zn or Ca. We have found that the magnetic response of these impurities, which behave as paramagnetic spins, depends on the host materials and the difference of the two manifests itself in the Weiss temperature, which can hardly be explained by the dilute magnetic impurities alone in the case of Ba3ZnRu2O9. We consider a contribu…
We study ferromagnetic transition in three-dimensional double-exchange model containing impurities. The influence of both spin fluctuations and impurity potential on conduction electrons is described in coherent potential approximation. In the framework of thermodynamic approach we construct Landau functional for the system "electrons (in disordered environment) + core spins". Analysing the Landau functional we calculate the temperature of ferromagnetic transition $T_C$ and paramagnetic susceptibility $χ$. For $T_C$, we thus extend the result obtained by Furukawa in the framework of the Dynami…
We characterize paramagnetic Mott insulators by their response to static, non-magnetic impurities. States with spinon deconfinement (or spin-charge separation) are distinguished from those with spinon confinement by distinct impurity susceptibilities and finite-size spectra. We discuss the evolution of physical properties upon doping to a d-wave superconductor, and argue that a number of recent experiments favor spinon confinement in the reference Mott insulating state.
The 3d electron spinel compound LiV2O4 exhibits heavy fermion behaviour below 30K which is related to antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations strongly enhanced in an extended region of momentum space. This mechanism explains enhanced thermodynamic quantities and nearly critical NMR relaxation in the framework of the selfconsistent renormalization (SCR) theory. Here we show that the low-T Fermi liquid behaviour of the resistivity and a deviation from this behavior for higher T may also be understood within that context. We calculate the temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity ρ(T) assu…
We study the boundary between ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic ground state of a double-exchange system with quenched disorder for arbitrary relation between Hund exchange coupling and electron band width. The boundary is found both from the solution of the Dynamical Mean Field Approximation equations and from the comparison of the energies of the saturated ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states. Both methods give very similar results. To explain the disappearance of ferromagnetism in part of the parameter space we derive from the double-exchange Hamiltonian with classical localized spins in…
We report on multiple photon monochromatic quantum oscillations (Rabi oscillations) observed by pulsed EPR (Electron Paramagnetic Resonance) of Mn$^{2+}$ (S=5/2) impurities in MgO. We find that when the microwave magnetic field is similar or large than the anisotropy splitting, the Rabi oscillations have a spectrum made of many frequencies not predicted by the S=1/2 Rabi model. We show that these new frequencies come from multiple photon coherent manipulation of the multi-level spin impurity. We develop a model based on the crystal field theory and the rotating frame approximation, describing …
In magnets with strong quantum fluctuations, paramagnetic ground states with or without confinement of spinon excitations can be realized. Here we discuss the physics of the confined phase in the vicinity of a confinement--deconfinement transition: This regime, likely relevant to a multitude of frustrated spin systems, is characterized by multiple length scales: In addition to the magnetic correlation length, a confinement length can be defined, which can be probed, e.g., by local static measurements near non-magnetic impurities. We illustrate the ideas by explicit calculations for dimerized s…
The phases and excitation spectrum of an easy-axis ferromagnetic chain of S=1/2 magnetic impurities built on the top of a clean metallic surface are studied. As a function of the (Kondo) coupling to the metallic surface and at low temperatures, the spin chain exhibits a quantum phase transition from an Ising ferromagnetic phase with long-range order to a paramagnetic phase where quantum fluctuations destroy the magnetic order. In the paramagnetic phase, the system consists of a chain of Kondo-singlets where the impurities are completely screened by the metallic host. In the ferromagnetic phase…
We study the magnetic susceptibility of one-dimensional S=1/2 antiferromagnets containing non-magnetic impurities which cut the chain into finite segments. For the susceptibility of long anisotropic Heisenberg chain-segments with open boundaries we derive a parameter-free result at low temperatures using field theory methods and the Bethe Ansatz. The analytical result is verified by comparing with Quantum-Monte-Carlo calculations. We then show that the partitioning of the chain into finite segments can explain the Curie-like contribution observed in recent experiments on Sr_2Cu_{1-x}Pd_xO_{3+δ…
Quantum spin-liquids are strongly correlated phases of matter displaying a highly entangled ground state. Due to their unconventional nature, finding experimental signatures of these states has proven to be a remarkable challenge. Here we show that the effects of local impurities can provide strong signatures of a Dirac quantum spin-liquid state. Focusing on a gapless Dirac quantum spin-liquid state as realized in NaYbO$_2$, we show that single magnetic impurity coupled to the quantum spin-liquid state creates a resonant spinon peak at zero frequency, coexisting the original Dirac spinons. We …
The quantum phase diagram of disordered electron systems as function of the concentration of magnetic impurities nm and the local exchange coupling J is studied in the dilute limit. We take into account the Anderson localisation of the electrons by a nonperturbative numerical treatment of the disorder potential. The competition between RKKY interaction JRKKY and the Kondo effect, as governed by the temperature scale TK, is known to gives rise to a rich magnetic quantum phase diagram, the Doniach diagram. Our numerical calculations show that in a disordered system both the Kondo temperature TK …
We report magnetic measurements up to 1200 K on multi-walled carbon nanotube mats using Quantum Design vibrating sample magnetometer. Extensive magnetic data consistently show two ferrromagnetic-like transitions at about 1000 K and 1275 K, respectively. The lower transition at about 1000 K is associated with an Fe impurity phase and its saturation magnetization is in quantitative agreement with the Fe concentration measured by an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer. On the other hand, the saturation magnetization for the higher transition phase ($\geq$1.0 emu/g) is about four orders o…
We study the influence of spinless impurities on a frustrated magnet featuring a spin-density wave (stripe) phase by means of Monte Carlo simulations. We demonstrate that the interplay between the impurities and an order parameter that breaks a real-space symmetry triggers the emergence of a random-field mechanism which destroys the stripe-ordered phase. Importantly, the strength of the emerging random fields can be tuned by the repulsion between the impurity atoms; they vanish for perfect anticorrelations between neighboring impurities. This provides a novel way of controlling the phase diagr…
The magnetocaloric effect in a two-dimensional Ising model is considered for different ratios between parameters of inter-site repulsion of nonmagnetic impurities and exchange coupling. Classical Monte Carlo simulations on a square lattice show that in case of weak coupling and at sufficiently high concentrations of nonmagnetic impurities the long-range ferromagnetic ordering breaks down to give isolated spin clusters in the ground state of the system. This leads to appearance of a paramagnetic response in the system at the zero temperature and nonzero entropy of the ground state. The feasibil…
The chemical selectivity and great sensitivity of the Extended X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy technique allowed the determination, in the paramagnetic phase, of the structural distortions induced by doping in the spin-Peierls CuGeO$_3$ compound. The distorted environments were analyzed as a function of concentration, magnetic nature of impurity and the substitution site (Ni, Mn and Zn impurities on the Cu site, Si impurity on the Ge site). This has led to estimate the variation of the angles and pair distances, and hence to evaluate the magnetic coupling along the Cu chains in the vicinity of t…
We study ferromagnetic transition in three-dimensional double-exchange model containing impurities. The influence of both spin fluctuations and impurity potential on conduction electrons is described in coherent potential approximation. In the framework of thermodynamic approach we construct Landau functional for the system "electrons (in disordered environment) + core spins". Analyzing the Landau functional we calculate the temperature of ferromagnetic transition $T_C$ and paramagnetic susceptibility $χ$. For $T_C$, we thus extend the result obtained by Furukawa in the framework of the Dynami…
Spin susceptibility of Anderson impurities is a key quantity in understanding the physics of Kondo screening. Traditional numerical renormalization group (NRG) calculation of the impurity contribution $χ_{\textrm{imp}}$ to susceptibility, defined originally by Wilson in a flat wide band, has been generalized before to structured conduction bands. The results brought about non-Fermi-liquid and diamagnetic Kondo behaviors in $χ_{\textrm{imp}}$, even when the bands are not gapped at the Fermi energy. Here, we use the full density-matrix (FDM) NRG to present high-quality data for the local suscept…
Paramagnetic impurities in a quantum spin-liquid can result in Kondo effects with highly unusual properties. We have studied the effect of locally exchange-coupling a paramagnetic impurity with the spin-1/2 honeycomb Kitaev model in its gapless spin-liquid phase. The (impurity) scaling equations are found to be insensitive to the sign of the coupling. The weak and strong coupling fixed points are stable, with the latter corresponding to a noninteracting vacancy and an interacting, spin-1 defect for the antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic cases respectively. The ground state in the strong coupl…
We report susceptibility, specific heat, and neutron diffraction measurements on NaCu$_2$O$_2$, a spin-1/2 chain compound isostructural to LiCu$_2$O$_2$, which has been extensively investigated. Below 13 K, we find a long-range ordered, incommensurate magnetic helix state with a propagation vector similar to that of LiCu$_2$O$_2$. In contrast to the Li analogue, substitutional disorder is negligible in NaCu$_2$O$_2$. We can thus rule out that the helix is induced by impurities, as was claimed on the basis of prior work on LiCu$_2$O$_2$. A spin Hamiltonian with frustrated longer-range exchange …
Quantitative prediction of electronic properties in correlated materials requires simulations without empirical truncations and parameters. We present a method to achieve this goal through a new ab initio formulation of dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Instead of using small impurities defined in a low-energy subspace, which require complicated downfolded interactions which are often approximated, we describe a full cell $GW$+DMFT approach, where the impurities comprise all atoms in a unit cell or supercell of the crystal. Our formulation results in large impurity problems, which we treat h…
We discuss the universal theory of localized impurities in the paramagnetic state of 2D antiferromagnets where the spin gap is assumed to be significantly smaller than a typical exchange energy. We study the impurity spin susceptibility near the host quantum transition from a gapped paramagnet to a Neel state, and we compute the impurity-induced damping of the spin-1 mode of the gapped antiferromagnet. Under suitable conditions our results apply also to d-wave superconductors.
We present the universal theory of arbitrary, localized impurities in a confining paramagnetic state of two-dimensional antiferromagnets with global SU(2) spin symmetry. The energy gap of the host antiferromagnet to spin-1 excitations, Δ, is assumed to be significantly smaller than a typical nearest neighbor exchange. In the absence of impurities, it was argued in earlier work (Chubukov et al. cond-mat/9304046) that the low-temperature quantum dynamics is universally and completely determined by the values of Δand a spin-wave velocity c. Here we establish the remarkable fact that no additional…
We give a theoretical analysis of published experimental studies of the effects of impurities and disorder on the superconducting transition temperature, T_c, of the organic molecular crystals kappa-ET_2X and beta-ET_2X (where ET is bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene and X is an anion eg I_3). The Abrikosov-Gorkov (AG) formula describes the suppression of T_c both by magnetic impurities in singlet superconductors, including s-wave superconductors and by non-magnetic impurities in a non-s-wave superconductor. We show that various sources of disorder lead to the suppression of T_c as describe…
The study of the anion ordered (TMTSF)\_2ClO\_4\_(1-x)ReO\_4\_x, solid solution in the limit of a low ReO\_4- substitution level (0<=x<=17%) has revealed a new and interesting phase diagram. Superconductivity is drastically suppressed as the effect of ReO\_4- non magnetic point defects increases following the digamma behaviour for usual superconductors in the presence of paramagnetic impurities. Then, no long range order can be stabilized above 0.1K in a narrow window of substitution. Finally, an insulating SDW ground state in ReO\_4- -rich samples is rapidly stabilized with the decrease of th…
