Applying a magnetic field in the hexagonal plane of YMn$_6$Sn$_6$ leads to a complex magnetic phase diagram of commensurate and incommensurate phases, one of which coexists with the topological Hall effect (THE) generated by a unique fluctuation-driven mechanism. Using unpolarized neutron diffraction, we report on the solved magnetic structure for two previously identified, but unknown, commensurate phases. These include a low-temperature, high-field fan-like phase and a room-temperature, low-field canted antiferromagnetic phase. An intermediate incommensurate phase between the fan-like and forced ferromagnetic phases is also identified as the last known phase of the in-plane field-temperature diagram. Additional characterization using synchrotron powder diffraction reveals extremely high-quality, single-phase crystals, which suggests that the presence of two incommensurate magnetic structures throughout much of the phase diagram is an intrinsic property of the system. Interestingly, polarized neutron diffraction shows that the centrosymmetric system hosts preferential chirality in the zero-field double-flat-spiral phase, which, along with the THE, is a topologically non-trivial characteristic.
The kagome lattice, consisting of interconnected triangles and hexagons uniquely, is an excellent model system for study frustrated magnetism, electronic correlation and topological electronic structure. After an intensive investigation on frustrated magnetism in insulating magnetic kagome lattices, the interplay between charge and spin degrees of freedom via spin-orbital coupling in metallic systems (kagome metals) has become an attractive topic recently. Here, we study centrosymmetric YMn6Sn6 with Mn kagome lattice. We discover that it exhibits giant topological Hall effect near room tempera…
The geometrical frustration nature of the kagome lattice makes it a great host to flat electronic band, non-trivial topological properties, and novel magnetisms. Metallic kagome antiferromagnet YMn$_{6}$Sn$_{6}$ exhibits the topological Hall effect (THE) when an in-plane magnetic field is applied. THE is typically associated with the nanometer-sized non-coplanar spin structure of skyrmions in non-centrosymmetric magnets with large Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Here we use single crystal neutron diffraction to determine the field/temperature dependence of the magnetic structure in YMn$_{6}…
Identification, understanding, and manipulation of novel magnetic textures is essential for the discovery of new quantum materials for future spin-based electronic devices. In particular, materials that manifest a large response to external stimuli such as a magnetic field are subject to intense investigation. Here, we study the kagome-net magnet YMn$_{6}$Sn$_{6}$ by magnetometry, transport, and neutron diffraction measurements combined with first principles calculations. We identify a number of nontrivial magnetic phases, explain their microscopic nature, and demonstrate that one of them host…
The Zeeman effect describes the energy change of an atomic quantum state in magnetic field. The magnitude and the direction of this change depend on the dimensionless Lande g-factor. In quantum solids, the response of the Bloch electron states to the magnetic field also exhibits the Zeeman effect with an effective g-factor that was theoretically predicted to be dependent on the momentum. While typically negligible in many ordinary solids, the momentum-dependent variation of the g-factor is theorized to be substantially enhanced in many topological and magnetic systems. However, the momentum-de…
We report on a ternary intermetallic compound, "YMn2Zn20", comprising a pyrochlore lattice made of Mn atoms. A series of In-doped single crystals undergo no magnetic long-range order down to 0.4 K, in spite of the fact that the Mn atom carries a local magnetic moment at high temperatures, showing Curie-Weiss magnetism. However, In-rich crystals exhibit spin-glass transitions at approximately 10 K due to a disorder arising from the substitution, while, with decreasing In content, the spin-glass transition temperature is reduced to 1 K. Then, heat capacity divided by temperature approaches a lar…
Orbital-specific Itinerancy and Localization in a Kagome Magnet
Institute of Metal Physics（金属物理研究所）；Ural Federal University（乌拉尔联邦大学）；National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center（国家同步辐射研究中心）；National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学）；Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）
Topological magnon is a vibrant research field gaining more and more attention in the past few years. Among many theoretical proposals and limited experimental studies, ferromagnetic Kagome lattice emerges as one of the most elucidating systems. Here we report neutron scattering studies of YMn6Sn6, a metallic system consisting of ferromagnetic Kagome planes. This system undergoes a commensurate-to-incommensurate antiferromagnetic phase transition upon cooling with the incommensurability along the out-of-plane direction. We observe magnon band gap opening at the symmetry-protected K points and …
Stabilizing Itinerant Electrons in a Corner-Sharing Kagomé Oxide Nd4Os3ZnO14
Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo（东京大学固体物理研究所）；Research Institute for Synchrotron Radiation Science (HiSOR), Hiroshima University（广岛大学同步辐射科学研究所）；Quantum Materials Science Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST)（冲绳科学技术大学院大学量子材料科学单元）；Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University（广岛大学先进理工学研究科）；International Institute for Sustainability with Knotted Chiral Meta Matter (WPI-SKCM2), Hiroshima University（广岛大学可持续纳米碳素国际研究中心）；Research Institute for Semiconductor Engineering, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima（东广岛半导体工程研究所）；Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI)（日本同步辐射研究机构）
Frustrated itinerant ferromagnets, with non-collinear static spin structures, are an exciting class of material as their spin chirality can introduce a Berry phase in the electronic scattering and lead to exotic electronic phenomena such as the anomalous Hall effect (AHE). This study presents a reexamination of the magnetic properties of Fe$_3$Sn$_2$, a metallic ferromagnet, based on the 2-dimensional kagome bilayer structure. Previously thought of as a conventional ferromagnet, we show using a combination of SQUID measurements, symmetry analysis and powder neutron diffraction, that Fe$_3$Sn$_…
Historically, the genesis of anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in magnetic materials has always been a fascinating yet controversial topic in the solid state physics community. Recent progress on the understanding of this topic has revealed an intimate connection between the Berry curvature of occupied electronic states and the intrinsic AHE. Magnetic Weyl semimetals with broken time reversal symmetry is a classic example, which is expected to show large contributions to Berry curvature around the topological nodes and hence to the AHE. Here, we report a kagome metallic ferromagnet Nd$_3$Al, with a …
Magnetic materials with competing magnetocrystalline anisotropy and dipolar energies can develop a wide range of domain patterns, including classical stripe domains, domain branching, as well as topologically trivial and non-trivial (skyrmionic) bubbles. We image the magnetic domain pattern of Fe$_3$Sn$_2$ by magnetic force microscopy (MFM) and study its evolution due to geometric confinement, magnetic fields, and their combination. In Fe$_3$Sn$_2$ lamellae thinner than 3 $μ$m, we observe stripe domains whose size scales with the square root of the lamella thickness, exhibiting classical Kitte…
Despite tremendous investigations, a quantum spin liquid state realized in spin-1/2 kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet remains largely elusive. In herbertsmithite ZnCu$_3$(OH)$_6$Cl$_2$, a quantum spin liquid candidate on the perfect kagome lattice, precisely characterizing the intrinsic physics of the kagome layers is extremely challenging due to the presence of interlayer Cu/Zn antisite disorder within its crystal structure. Here we measured the specific heat and thermal conductivity of single crystal herbertsmithite in magnetic fields with high resolution. Our results are highlighted by the …
Ce$_{3}$Al is an archetypal heavy-fermion compound with multiple crystalline phases. Here, we try to investigate its electronic structures in the hexagonal phase ($α$-Ce$_{3}$Al) and cubic phase ($β$-Ce$_{3}$Al) by means of a combination of density functional theory and single-site dynamical mean-field theory. We confirm that the 4$f$ valence electrons in both phases are itinerant, accompanied with strong valence state fluctuations. Their 4$f$ band structures are heavily renormalized by electronic correlations, resulting in large effective electron masses. The Kondo screening in Ce$_{3}$Al wou…
Effective Ionic Valence and Local Magnetic Moment in Kagome Superconductors
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；University of California Santa Barbara（加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校）；Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research（莱布尼茨固体与材料研究所）
An anomalous Hall insulator without magnetic long-range ordering is theoretically reported in the absence of the relativistic spin-orbit coupling. It is realized in itinerant electrons coupled with the Ising spins on a <111> kagome plane of pyrochlore spin ice in applied magnetic field. We find that the kagome-ice type local spin correlation in the magnetization plateau state opens a charge gap without magnetic ordering, which results in quantization of the Hall conductivity. By Monte Carlo simulation, we identify the anomalous Hall insulating region in the magnetic phase diagram, in addition …
We report an unconventional class of pressure induced quantum phase transition, possessing two bicritical points at 6.25 GPa in URhSn. This unique transformation accompanies a Fermi surface reconstruction, demarcating competing ordered phases suitably described with localized and itinerant description of the magnetic $5f$-electrons. Ferromagnetic fluctuations over a wide range of temperatures and pressures in the pressure-induced low temperature phase are evidenced by a robust $T^{5/3}$ temperature dependence of resistivity up to 11 GPa, which is a characteristic of elusive marginal Fermi-liqu…
Observation of Resonance of Kagome Flat Band Doublet
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学李政道研究所）；School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学理学院）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院）；Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海高等研究院上海同步辐射光源设施）；Department of Physics, Boston College（波士顿学院物理系）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学李政道研究所新基石科学实验室）；Zhangjiang Institute for Advanced Study, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学张江高等研究院）
Motivated by recent experiments in Gd$_3$Ru$_4$Al$_{12}$, we demonstrate the emergence of atomic scale Skyrmions in interacting spins on a breathing kagome lattice with competing nearest neighbor ferromagnetic and next nearest neighbor antiferromagnetic exchange interactions. In the presence of an applied longitudinal magnetic field, the ground state magnetic order evolves from a helical phase at low fields to a Skyrmion phase at intermediate fields before finally entering a polarized phase at high fields. The size of each Skyrmion spans only two unit cells of the lattice, in contrast to tens …
The kagome lattice is a fertile platform to explore topological excitations with both Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics. While relativistic Dirac Fermions and flat-bands have been discovered in the electronic structure of kagome metals, the spin excitations have received less attention. Here we report inelastic neutron scattering studies of the prototypical kagome magnetic metal FeSn. The spectra display well-defined spin waves extending up to 120 meV. Above this energy, the spin waves become progressively broadened, reflecting interactions with the Stoner continuum. Using linear spin w…
We consider the potential for novel forms of magnetism arising from the subtle interplay between electrons and spins in the under-screened kagome Kondo lattice model. At weak coupling, we show that incommensurate non-coplanar multi-wave vector magnetic orders arise at nearly all fillings and that this results from Fermi surface effects that introduces competing interactions between the spins. At strong coupling, we find that such complex order survives near half filling despite the presence of ferromagnetism at all other fillings. We show this arises due to state selection among a massive dege…
Itinerant electrons in a two-dimensional Kagome lattice form a Dirac semi-metal, similar to graphene. When lattice and spin symmetries are broken by various periodic perturbations this semi-metal is shown to spawn interesting non-magnetic insulating phases. These include a two-dimensional topological insulator with a non-trivial Z_2 invariant and robust gapless edge states, as well as dimerized and trimerized `Kekule' insulators. The latter two are topologically trivial but the Kekule phase possesses a complex order parameter with fractionally charged vortex excitations. A charge density wave …
Theory of unconventional magnetism in a Cu-based kagome metal
Universität Würzburg（维尔茨堡大学）；Istituto Officina dei Materiali, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche（意大利国家研究委员会材料研究所）；ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；University of Geneva（日内瓦大学）；University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）；Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学）；University of Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）
Recently, a novel material with bilayer kagome lattice Ca$_{10}$Cr$_7$O$_{28}$ was proposed to be a gapless quantum spin liquid, due to the lack of long-range magnetic order and the observation of broad diffuse excitations. Here, we present the ultralow-temperature thermal conductivity measurements on single crystals of Ca$_{10}$Cr$_7$O$_{28}$ to detect its low-lying magnetic excitations. At finite temperatures, with increasing the magnetic fields, the thermal conductivity exhibits a clear dip around 6 T, which may correspond to a crossover in the magnetic ground state. At the zero-temperature…
High-pressure modulation of breathing kagome lattice: Cascade of Lifshitz transitions and evolution of the electronic structure
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf（德累斯顿罗森多夫赫尔姆霍兹中心）；TUD Dresden University of Technology（德累斯顿工业大学）；Universität Stuttgart（斯图加特大学）；Synchrotron SOLEIL（索雷尔同步辐射中心）；ESRF（欧洲同步辐射装置）；ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学）；Renmin University of China（中国人民大学）
TbMn6Sn6 is a metallic ferrimagnet displaying signatures of both topological electrons and topological magnons arising from ferromagnetism and spin-orbit coupling within its Mn kagome layers. Inelastic neutron scattering measurements find strong ferromagnetic (FM) interactions within the Mn kagome layer and reveal a magnetic bandwidth of ~230 meV. The low-energy magnetic excitations are characterized by strong FM Mn-Mn and antiferromagnetic (AFM) Mn-Tb interlayer magnetic couplings. We observe weaker, competing long-range FM and AFM Mn-Mn interlayer interactions similar to those driving helica…
Magnetic and electronic states of an Ising-spin Kondo lattice model on a kagome lattice are investigated by a Monte Carlo simulation. In addition to the conventional ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic orders, we show that this model exhibits several thermally-induced phases, such as partially disordered, Kosteritz-Thouless-like, and loop-liquid states. In the partially disordered state, we show that the magnetic transition is associated with the charge-gap formation. We find that the density of state shows characteristic peaks reflecting the underlying spin texture. In the loop-liquid state, we a…
The Goldstone mode in a helical magnetic phase, also known as the helimagnon, is a propagating mode with a highly anisotropic dispersion relation. Here we study theoretically the helimagnon excitations in a complex chiral ground state of pyrochlore antiferromagnets such as spinel CdCr2O4 and itinerant magnet YMn2. We show that the effective theory of the soft modes in the helical state possesses a symmetry similar to that of smectic liquid crystals. We compute the low-energy spin-wave spectrum based on a microscopic spin Hamiltonian and find a dispersion relation characteristic of the helimagn…
Spectroscopic origin of giant anomalous Hall effect in an interwoven magnetic kagome metal
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids（马克斯·普朗克固体化学物理研究所）；ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学）；Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室）；Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）；Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics（北京凝聚态物理国家研究中心）；Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Wuhan University（武汉大学）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory（松山湖材料实验室）
The tractability of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model at large $N$ limit makes it ideal to theoretically study its chaotic non-Fermi liquid behavior and holographic duality properties. We show that the complex SYK Hamiltonian emerges from a system of spinless itinerant fermions in an optical Kagome lattice with a strong disorder. We discuss the regimes supporting flat band spectra in a Kagome lattice, where the system can be non-dispersive. Random interaction between non-dispersive fermions is induced due to randomly distributed immobile impurities in the optical lattice, that exclude the pres…
We study the interplay between magnetic frustration and itinerant electrons. For example, how does the coupling to mobile charges modify the properties of a spin liquid, and does the underlying frustration favor insulating or conducting states? Supported by Monte Carlo simulations, our goal is in particular to provide an analytical picture of the mechanisms involved. The models under considerations exhibit Coulomb phases in two and three dimensions, where the itinerant electrons are coupled to the localized spins via double exchange interactions. Because of the Hund coupling, magnetic loops na…
Intricacies of Frustrated Magnetism in the Kondo Metal YbAgGe
PSI Center for Neutron and Muon Sciences（保罗谢勒研究所中子与μ子科学中心）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University（爱荷华州立大学物理与天文系）；Ames National Laboratory（艾姆斯国家实验室）；Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory（橡树岭国家实验室中子散射部）；Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD-EMFL), Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf（德累斯顿强磁场实验室（HLD-EMFL），赫尔霍兹德累斯顿-罗斯多夫中心）；ISIS Facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory（STFC卢瑟福阿普尔顿实验室ISIS设施）；Institut Laue-Langevin（朗之万研究所）
The magnetic structure of the "nonmetallic metal" FeCrAs, a compound with the characters of both metals and insulators, was examined as a function of temperature using single-crystal neutron diffraction. The magnetic propagation vector was found to be $\mathit{k}$ = (1/3, 1/3, 0), and the magnetic reflections disppeared above $\mathit{T_{N}}$ = 116(1) K. In the ground state, the Cr sublattice shows an in-plane spiral antiferromagnetic order. The moment sizes of the Cr ions were found to be small, due to strong magnetic frustration in the distorted Kagome lattice or the itinerant nature of the …
Mott-Derived Local Moments and Kondo Hybridization in a d-electron Kagome lattice
Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理国家实验室）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University（清华大学物理系低维量子物理国家重点实验室）；National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University（南京大学固体微结构物理全国重点实验室及物理学院）；Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院化学物理研究所）
Based on the density functional theory, we examine the origin of ferromagnetism in the Weyl semimetal Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$ using different types of response theories. We argue that the magnetism of Co$_3$Sn$_2$S$_2$ has a dual nature and bears certain aspects of both itineracy and localization. On the one hand, the magnetism is soft, where the local magnetic moments strongly depend on temperature and the angles formed by these moments at different Co sites of the kagome lattice, as expected for itinerant magnets. On the other hand, the picture of localized spins still remains adequate for the des…
Quantum critical point followed by Kondo-like behavior due to Cu substitution in itinerant, antiferromagnet ${\text{La}_{2}\text{(Cu}_{x}\text {Ni}_{1-x})_7}$
Ames National Laboratory, U.S. DOE（美国能源部爱姆斯国家实验室）；Iowa State University（艾奥瓦州立大学）
