• Open Access

Strain tuning of highly frustrated magnets: Order and disorder in the distorted kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet

Mary Madelynn Nayga and Matthias Vojta
Phys. Rev. B 105, 094426 – Published 22 March 2022

Abstract

Strain applied to a condensed-matter system can be used to engineer its excitation spectrum via artificial gauge fields or it may tune the system through transitions between different phases. Here we demonstrate that strain tuning of the ground state of otherwise highly degenerate frustrated systems can induce novel phases, both ordered and disordered. For the classical Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice, we show that weak triaxial strain reduces the degeneracies of the system, leading to a classical spin liquid with noncoplanar configurations, while stronger strain drives the system into a highly unconventional state which displays signatures of both spin-glass behavior and magnetic long-range order. We provide experimentally testable predictions for the magnetic structure factor, characterize the ground-state degeneracies and the excitation spectrum, and analyze the influence of sample shape and boundaries. Our paper opens the way to strain engineering of highly frustrated magnets.

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  • Received 10 August 2021
  • Revised 5 March 2022
  • Accepted 10 March 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.094426

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Mary Madelynn Nayga1,2 and Matthias Vojta1

  • 1Institut für Theoretische Physik and Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
  • 2Max-Planck-Institut für Chemische Physik fester Stoffe, Nöthnitzer Str. 40, 01187 Dresden, Germany

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Issue

Vol. 105, Iss. 9 — 1 March 2022

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