We theoretically study the nonlinear magnetic resonance driven by intense laser or electromagnetic wave in a fully polarized frustrated magnet near a less-visible spin-nematic ordered phase. In general, both magnons and magnon pairs (two-magnon bound state) appear as the low-energy excitation in the saturated state of spin-nematic magnets. Their excitation energies are usually in terahertz (THz) or gigahertz range. Magnon pairs with angular momentum 2$\hbar$ can be excited by the simultaneous absorption of two photons, and such multi-photon processes occur if the applied THz laser is strong enough. We compute laser-driven magnetic dynamics of a frustrated four-spin system with both magnon ($\hbar$) and magnon-pair (2$\hbar$) like excitations which is analogous to a macroscopic frustrated magnet with a spin nematic phase. We estimate the required strength of magnetic field of laser for the realization of two photon absorption, taking into account dissipation effects with the Lindblad equation. We show that intense THz laser with ac magnetic field of 0.1-1.0 Tesla is enough to observe magnon-pair resonance.
Competing ferro- and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions may lead to the formation of bound magnon pairs in the high-field phase of a frustrated quantum magnet. With decreasing field, magnon pairs undergo a Bose-condensation prior to the onset of a conventional one-magnon instability. We develop an analytical approach to study the zero-temperature properties of the magnon-pair condensate, which is a bosonic analog of the BCS superconductors. Representation of the condensate wave-function in terms of the coherent bosonic states reveals the spin-nematic symmetry of the ground-state and allow…
Investigating exotic magnetic materials with spintronic techniques is effective at advancing magnetism as well as spintronics. In this work, we report unusual field-induced suppression of the spin-Seebeck effect (SSE) in a quasi one-dimensional frustrated spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ magnet LiCuVO$_4$, known to exhibit spin-nematic correlation in a wide range of external magnetic field $B$. The suppression takes place above $|B| > 2$ T in spite of the $B$-linear isothermal magnetization curves in the same $B$ range. The result can be attributed to the growth of the spin-nematic correlation while increas…
In this paper we propose that electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements enable us to detect the long-range spin nematic order. We show that the frequency of the paramagnetic resonance peak in the ESR spectrum is shifted by the ferroquadrupolar order parameter together with other quantities. The ferroquadrupolar order parameter is extractable from the angular dependence of the frequency shift. In contrast, the antiferroquadrupolar order parameter is usually invisible in the frequency shift. Instead, the long-range antiferroquadrupolar order yields a characteristic resonance peak in the ESR spe…
The $S=1/2$ quantum spin ladder system with the anisotropic ferromagnetic exchange interaction on the rung under magnetic field is investigated using the numerical diagonalization and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) analyses. It is found that the nematic-spin-correlation-dominant Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) appears in some high magnetic field. It is included in the TLL phase where the two-magnon bound state is realized. For some suitable parameters, after the field-induced phase transition from this two-magnon-bound TLL phase to the single-magnon TLL one, the re-entrant tra…
We discuss spin-1/2 one-dimensional (1D) and quasi-1D magnets with competing ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor $J_1$ and antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor $J$ exchange interactions in strong magnetic field $H$. It is well known that due to attraction between magnons quantum phase transitions (QPTs) take place at $H=H_s$ from the fully polarized phase to nematic ones if $J>|J_1|/4$. Such a transition at $J>0.368|J_1|$ is characterized by softening of the two-magnon bound-state spectrum. Using a bond operator formalism we propose a bosonic representation of the spin Hamiltonian containing, as…
We study dynamics and relaxation of elementary excitations (magnons) in the spin nematic (quadrupole ordered) phase of S=1 magnets. We develop a general phenomenological theory of spin dynamics and relaxation for spin-1 systems. Results of the phenomenological approach are compared to those obtained by microscopic calculations for the specific S=1 model with isotropic bilinear and biquadratic exchange interactions. This model exhibits a rich behavior depending on the ratio of bilinear and biquadratic exchange constants, including several points with an enhanced symmetry. It is shown that symme…
Frustrated spin systems can show phases with spontaneous breaking of spin-rotational symmetry without the formation of local magnetic order. We study the dynamic response of the spin-nematic phase of one-dimensional spin-1/2 systems, characterized by slow large-distance decay of quadrupolar correlations, by numerically computing one-spin and two-spin dynamical structure factors at zero temperature using time-dependent density matrix renormalization group methods. We interpret the results in terms of an effective theory of gapped magnon excitations interacting with a quasi-condensate of bound m…
Magnetic frustration can lead to peculiar magnetic orderings that break a discrete symmetry of the lattice in addition to the fundamental magnetic symmetries (i.e., spin rotation invariance and time-reversal symmetry). In this work, we focus on frustrated quantum magnets and study the nature of the quantum phase transition between a paramagnet and a magnetically ordered state with broken threefold ($Z_3$) crystal rotation symmetry. We predict the transition to happen in two stages, giving rise to an intermediate nematic phase in which rotation symmetry is broken but the system remains magnetic…
We discuss the magnetization process slightly below the saturation field in frustrated magnets. A condensation of bound magnons on the spin-polarized state induces either a spin nematic phase or a state with phase separation. The (effective) interaction between the bound magnon pairs not only is crucial to the stability of the nematic phase, but also determines the slope of the magnetization curve near saturation. We generally derive the expression of this interaction by using the perturbative scattering theory. By applying the method to coupled zigzag chains LiCuVO4, we find the positive pair…
The bond-nematic state has both long-range ordering of magnetic quadrupoles and the high entanglement typical of spin liquids, and as such can be thought of as a spin liquid crystal. One of the most promising materials in which to find such a state is BaCdVO(PO$_4$)$_2$, in which a magnetically silent phase has been found between a magnetically ordered low-field phase and the high-field polarised phase. Here I study the magnetic Hamiltonian of BaCdVO(PO$_4$)$_2$, and, for the Hamiltonian-parameters determined by fits to inelastic neutron scattering experiments, show that magnons condense out o…
The electronic nematic phase occurs when the point-group symmetry of the lattice structure is broken, due to electron-electron interactions. We study a model for the nematic phase on a square lattice with emphasis on the phase transition between isotropic and nematic phases within mean field theory. We find the transition to be first order, with dramatic changes in the Fermi surface topology accompanying the transition. Furthermore, we study the conductivity tensor and Hall constant as probes of the nematic phase and its transition. The relevance of our findings to Hall resistivity experiments…
We study the effects of quantum fluctuations in magnetic properties of quantum frustrated ferromagnets in a magnetic field. It is shown that a non-classical phase or a phase separation appears due to quantum fluctuations below the saturation field in a parameter range close to the classical zero-field phase boundary between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases, for the case that the classical antiferromagnetic state is not an eigenstate of the quantum model. As an example to which this argument is applicable, we study the S=1/2 J1-J2 Heisenberg model with ferromagnetic J1 (J1<0) on the b…
We demonstrate theoretically that the thermal Hall effect of magnons in collinear antiferromagnetic insulators is an indicator of magnetic and topological phase transitions in the magnon spectrum. The transversal heat current of magnons caused by a thermal gradient is calculated for an antiferromagnet on a honeycomb lattice. An applied magnetic field drives the system from the antiferromagnetic phase via a spin-flop phase into the field-polarized phase. Besides these magnetic phase transitions we find topological phase transitions within the spin-flop phase. Both types of transitions manifest …
We investigate the Zeeman-field-driven quantum phase transitions between singlet spin liquids and algebraically ordered O(2) nematic spin liquids of spin-one bosons in one-dimensional optical lattices. We find that the critical behavior is characterized by condensation of hardcore bosons instead of ideal magnons in high dimensional lattices. Critical exponents are strongly renormalized by hardcore interactions and critical states are equivalent to the free Fermion model up to the Friedal oscillations. We also find that the algebraically ordered nematic spin liquids close to critical points are…
Electronic nematic phases are broadly characterized by spontaneously broken rotational symmetry. Although they have been widely recognized in the context of high temperature cuprates, bilayer ruthenates, and iron-based superconductors, the focus so far has been exclusively on the uniform nematic phase. Recently, however, it was proposed that on a square lattice a nematic instability in the d-wave charge channel could lead to a spatially modulated nematic state, where the modulation vector q is determined by the relative location of the Fermi level to the van Hove singularity. Interestingly, th…
The magnetization process of the $S=1$ antiferromagnetic chain with the single-ion anisotropy $D$ and the biquadratic interaction is investigated using the numerical diagonalization. Both interactions stabilize the 2-magnon Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) phase in the magnetization process. Based on several excitation gaps calculated by the numerical diagonalization, some phase diagrams of the magnetization process are presented. These phase diagrams reveal that the spin nematic dominant TLL phase appears at higher magnetizations for sufficiently large negative $D$.
We show, by means of dynamical mean-field theory calculations, that the experimental fingerprints of the nematic order in iron-based superconductors are intrinsically connected with the electronic correlations in the Hund's correlated metallic state and they can not be accessed via a renormalized quasiparticle picture. In particular, our results show that: (i) in a metal in which correlations are dominated by the Hund's coupling the nematic ordering does not produce a rigid energy shift in the photoemission spectra, but a much richer spectral weight redistribution which mirrors the experimenta…
We study spin and charge susceptibilities in the d-wave superconducting state whose underlying electronic dispersion is anisotropic due to the formation of the electronic nematic order. We show that the amplitude of the incommensurate peaks in the spin susceptibility near (π,π) reveals a pronounced anisotropy in the momentum space. The relevance of our findings to the magnetic scattering pattern observed in a recent neutron scattering measurement on untwinned YBa_2Cu_3O_{6+x} is discussed. In the charge channel, we identify a well-defined collective mode at small momentum transfer with strong …
We study experimental signatures of the Ising nematic quantum phase transition in d-wave superconductors, associated with the change of lattice symmetry from tetragonal to orthorhombic in the superconducting state. The characteristic feature of this transition is that the ratio between the Fermi velocity $v_F$ and gap velocity $v_Δ$ flows to a maximally anisotropic fixed point, i.e. the renormalization group fixed point is situated at (v_Δ/v_F)^*=0$. Our main point is that the logarithmic approach to this fixed point has visible signatures in the thermal transport. The analysis of the quasipar…
We study the inelastic neutron scattering cross section in the vicinity of touching points in magnon bands. Among the possible touching points are magnon Weyl points in three dimensional ordered magnets with significant spin-orbit coupling that are characterized by a linear dispersion in their vicinity. A Weyl point is topologically protected by its net chirality and here we show that this leads to a characteristic form for the dynamical structure factor. To address this question, we show that scattering intensities in the vicinity of arbitrary magnon two-band touching points are identical to …
We provide a route to generate nematic order in a spin-1/2 system. Unlike the well-known magnon-binding mechanism, our spin nematics requires neigher the frustration effect nor a spin polarization in a high field or in the vicinity of a ferromagnet, but instead appears next to the spin singlet phase. We start from a state consisting of a quantum spin-1/2 singlet dimer placed on each site of a triangular lattice, and show that inter-dimer ring exchange interactions efficiently dope the SU(2) triplets that itinerate and interact, easily driving a stable singlet state to either Bose Einstein cond…
We present a new scenario for the breakdown of ferromagnetic order in a two-dimensional quantum magnet with competing ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions. In this, dynamical effects lead to the formation of two-magnon bound states, which undergo Bose-Einstein condensation, giving rise to bond-centered nematic order. This scenario is explored in some detail for an extended Heisenberg model on a square lattice. In particular, we present numerical evidence confirming the existence of a state with d-wave nematic correlations but no long range magnetic order, lying between the saturate…
Ultrafast optical excitation of magnons in 2D antiferromagnetic semiconductors via spin torque mediated by unbound electron-hole pairs and excitons: Signatures in magnonic charge pumping
We develop a numerically exact scheme for resumming certain classes of Feynman diagrams in the self-consistent perturbation expansion for the electron and magnon self-energies in the nonequilibrium Green function formalism applied to a coupled electron-magnon (\mbox{e-m}) system which is driven out of equilibrium by the applied finite bias voltage. Our scheme operates with the electronic and magnonic GFs and the corresponding self-energies viewed as matrices in the Keldysh space, rather than conventionally extracting their retarded and lesser components. This is employed to understand the effe…
We report a 51V nuclear magnetic resonance investigation of the frustrated spin-1/2 chain compound LiCuVO4, performed in pulsed magnetic fields and focused on high-field phases up to 55 T. For the crystal orientations H // c and H // b we find a narrow field region just below the magnetic saturation where the local magnetization remains uniform and homogeneous, while its value is field dependent. This behavior is the first microscopic signature of the spin-nematic state, breaking spin-rotation symmetry without generating any transverse dipolar order, and is consistent with theoretical predicti…
The electronic nematic order characterized by broken rotational symmetry has been suggested to play an important role in the phase diagram of the high temperature cuprates. We study the interplay between the electronic nematic order and a spin density wave order in the presence of a magnetic field. We show that a cooperation of the nematicity and the magnetic field induces a finite coupling between the spin density wave and spin-triplet staggered flux orders. As a consequence of such a coupling, the magnon gap decreases as the magnetic field increases, and it eventually condenses beyond a crit…
We provide an exact study of dynamical correlations for the quantum spin-orbital liquid phases of an SU(2)-symmetric Kitaev honeycomb lattice model. We show that the spin dynamics in this Kugel-Khomskii type model is exactly the density-density correlation function of S=1 fermionic magnons, which could be probed in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering experiments. We predict the characteristic signatures of spin-orbital fractionalization in inelastic scattering experiments and compare them to the ones of the spin-anisotropic Kitaev honeycomb spin liquid. In particular, the resonant inelastic x-…
Symmetry breaking is a fundamental concept in condensed matter physics whose presence often heralds new phases of matter. For instance, the breaking of time reversal symmetry is traditionally linked to magnetic phases in a material, while the breaking of gauge symmetry can lead to superfluidity/superconductivity. Nematic phases are phases in which rotational symmetry is broken while maintaining translational symme- try, and are traditionally associated with liquid crystals. Electronic nematic states where the or- thogonal in-plane crystal directions have different electronic properties have ga…
Signature of Magnon-Raman Phonon-Polariton Condensation in a Cavity via Transverse Pumping
Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani-Dubai Campus（比拉理工学院，皮拉尼-迪拜校区）；Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus（比拉理工学院，海德拉巴校区）
The elastocaloric effect (ECE) is a thermodynamic quantity relating changes in entropy to changes in strain experienced by a material. As such, ECE measurements can provide valuable information about the entropy landscape proximate to strain-tuned phase transitions. For ordered states that break only point symmetries, bilinear coupling of the order parameter with strain implies that the ECE can also provide a window on fluctuations above the critical temperature, and hence, in principle, can also provide a thermodynamic measure of the associated susceptibility. To demonstrate this, we use the …
In the vicinity of a quantum critical point, quenched disorder can lead to a quantum Griffiths phase, accompanied by an exotic power-law scaling with a continuously varying dynamical exponent that diverges in the zero-temperature limit. Here, we investigate a nematic quantum critical point in the iron-based superconductor FeSe$_{0.89}$S$_{0.11}$ using applied hydrostatic pressure. We report an unusual crossing of the magnetoresistivity isotherms in the non-superconducting normal state which features a continuously varying dynamical exponent over a large temperature range. We interpret our resu…
Using $^{31}$P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) we investigate the recently discovered presaturation phase in the highly frustrated two-dimensional spin system SrZnVO(PO$_4$)$_2$ [F. Landolt et al., Phys. Rev. B 104, 224435 (2021)]. Our data provide two pieces of evidence against the presumed spin-nematic character of this phase: i) NMR spectra reveal that it hosts a dipolar spin order and ii) the 1/$T_1$ relaxation rate data recorded above the saturation field can be fitted by the sum of a single-magnon term, exponential in the gap, and a critical second-order term, exponential in the triple …
A key actor in the conventional theory of superconductivity is the induced interaction between electrons mediated by the exchange of virtual collective fluctuations, originally phonons. Other collective modes that can play the same role, especially spin-fluctuations, have been widely discussed in the context of high-temperature and heavy Fermion superconductors. The strength of such collective fluctuations is measured by the associated susceptibility. Here we use differential elastoresistance measurements on five optimally doped Fe-based superconductors to reveal that a diverging \emph{nematic…
Phononic enhancement and detection of hidden spin-nematicity and dynamics in quantum magnets
International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University（北京大学物理学院量子材料国际中心）；Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter（量子物质协同创新中心）
Electronic nematicity in correlated metals often occurs alongside another instability such as magnetism. As a result, the question remains whether nematicity alone can drive unconventional superconductivity or anomalous (quantum critical) transport in such systems. In FeSe, nematicity emerges in isolation, providing a unique opportunity to address this question. Studies to date, however, have proved inconclusive; while signatures of nematic criticality are observed upon sulfur substitution, they appear to be quenched under the application of pressure due to the emergent magnetism. Here, we stu…
We report neutron scattering and AC magnetic susceptibility measurements of the 2D spin-1/2 frustrated magnet BaCdVO(PO$_{4}$)$_{2}$. At temperatures well below $T_{\sf N}\approx 1K$, we show that only 34 % of the spin moment orders in an up-up-down-down strip structure. Dominant magnetic diffuse scattering and comparison to published $μ$sr measurements indicates that the remaining 66 % is fluctuating. This demonstrates the presence of strong frustration, associated with competing ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions, and points to a subtle ordering mechanism driven by magnon inter…
The elementary excitations from the conventional magnetic ordered states, such as ferromagnets and antiferromagnets, are magnons. Here, we elaborate a case where the well-defined magnons are absent completely and the spin excitation spectra exhibit an entire continuum in the itinerant edge ferromagnetic state of graphene arising from the flatband edge electronic states. Based on the further studies of the entanglement entropy and finite-size analysis, we show that the continuum other than the Stoner part results from the spin-1/2 spinons deconfined from magnons. The spinon continuum in a magne…
We study S=1 kagome antiferromagnets with isotropic Heisenberg exchange $J$ and strong easy axis single-ion anisotropy $D$. For $D \gg J$, the low-energy physics can be described by an effective $S=1/2$ $XXZ$ model with antiferromagnetic $J_z \sim J$ and ferromagnetic $J_\perp \sim J^2/D$. Exploiting this connection, we argue that non-trivial ordering into a "spin-nematic" occurs whenever $D$ dominates over $J$, and discuss its experimental signatures. We also study a magnetic field induced transition to a magnetization plateau state at magnetization 1/3 which breaks lattice translation symmet…
We use inelastic neutron scattering to study acoustic phonons and spin excitations in single crystals of NaFeAs, a parent compound of iron pnictide superconductors. NaFeAs exhibits a tetragonal-to-orthorhombic structural transition at $T_s\approx 58$ K and a collinear antiferromagnetic (AF) order at $T_N\approx 45$ K. While longitudinal and out-of-plane transverse acoustic phonons behave as expected, the in-plane transverse acoustic phonons reveal considerable softening on cooling to $T_s$, and then harden on approaching $T_N$ before saturating below $T_N$. In addition, we find that spin-spin …
We study the spin 1/2 triangular-lattice $J_1$-$J_2$-$J_3$ antiferromagnet close to the saturation field using the dilute Bose gas theory, where the magnetic structure is determined by the condensation of magnons. We focus on the case of ferromagnetic $J_1$ and antiferromagnetic $J_2,J_3$, that is particularly rich because frustration effects allow the single-magnon energy dispersion to have six-fold degenerate minima at incommensurate momenta. Our calculation also includes an interlayer coupling $J_0$, which covers both antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic cases including negligibly small regi…
The Kitaev model is a remarkable spin model with gapped and gapless spin liquid phases, which are potentially realized in iridates and $α$-RuCl$_3$. In the recent experiment of $α$-RuCl$_3$, the signature of a nematic transition to the gapped toric code phase, which breaks the $C_3$ symmetry of the system, has been observed through the angle dependence of the heat capacity. We here propose a mechanism by which the nematic transition can be detected electrically. This is seemingly impossible because $J_\textrm{eff}=1/2$ spins do not have an electric quadrupole moment (EQM). However, in the seco…
We report studies of thermal conductivity as functions of magnetic field and temperature in the helimagnetic insulator Cu$_2$OSeO$_3$ that reveal novel features of the spin-phase transitions as probed by magnon heat conduction. The tilted conical spiral and low-temperature skyrmion phases, recently identified in small-angle neutron scattering studies, are clearly identified by sharp signatures in the magnon thermal conductivity. Magnon scattering associated with the presence of domain boundaries in the tilted conical phase and regions of skyrmion and conical-phase coexistence are identified.
To clarify the transport property mediated by bound magnons in a spin nematic state, we investigate the spin Drude weight of a spin-1/2 $J_{1}$-$J_{2}$ Heisenberg chain with ferromagnetic $J_{1}$ and antiferromagnetic $J_{2}$ in a magnetic field by numerical diagonalization. At zero magnetic field, numerical results with up to 24 sites suggest that the spin Drude weight would be zero in the thermodynamic limit, indicating diffusive spin transport. With increasing the magnetic field, the spin Drude weight is enhanced at low temperatures, indicating that bound magnons would contribute to the spi…
We study the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with competing ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor J_1 and antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor J_2 exchange couplings in the presence of magnetic field. We use both numerical approaches (the density matrix renormalization group method and exact diagonalization) and effective field-theory approach, and obtain the ground-state phase diagram for wide parameter range of the coupling ratio J_1/J_2. The phase diagram is rich and has a variety of phases, including the vector chiral phase, the nematic phase, and other multipolar phases. In the vect…
We consider insulating phases of cold spin-1 bosonic particles with antiferromagnetic interactions, such as Na-23, in optical lattices. We show that spin-exchange interactions give rise to several distinct phases, which differ in their spin correlations. In two- and three- dimensional lattices insulating phases with odd number of particles per site are always nematic. For insulating states with even number of particles per site there is always a spin-singlet phase and there may also be a first-order transition into the nematic phase. The nematic phase breaks spin rotational symmetry, but prese…
