Heat capacity reveals the physics of a frustrated spin tube

Nedko B. Ivanov, Jürgen Schnack, Roman Schnalle, Johannes Richter, Paul Kögerler, Graham N. Newton, Leroy Cronin, Yugo Oshima, Hiroyuki Nojiri

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47 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We report on theoretical and experimental results concerning the low-temperature specific heat of the frustrated spin-tube material [(CuCl2tachH)3Cl]Cl2 (tach denotes 1,3,5-triaminocyclohexane). This substance turns out to be an unusually perfect spin-tube system which allows to study the physics of quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnetic structures in rather general terms. An analysis of the specific-heat data demonstrates that at low enough temperatures the system exhibits a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid behavior corresponding to an effective spin-3/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain with short-range exchange interactions. On the other hand, around 2 K the composite spin structure of the chain is revealed through a Schottky-type peak in the specific heat. We argue that the dominating contribution to the peak originates from gapped magnon-type excitations related to the internal degrees of freedom of the rung spins.

Original languageEnglish
Article number037206
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume105
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010 Jul 16

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