Spontaneous Spin Ordering of a Dirac Spin Liquid in a Magnetic Field

The Dirac spin liquid was proposed to be the ground state of the spin-1/2 kagomé antiferromagnets. In a magnetic field B, we show that the state with Fermi pocket is unstable to the Landau level (LL) state. The LL state breaks the spin rotation around the axis of the magnetic field. We find that the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lee, Patrick A., Ko, Wing Ho, Wen, Xiao-Gang, Ran, Ying
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society 2010
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/51342
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5874-581X
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7809-8157
Description
Summary:The Dirac spin liquid was proposed to be the ground state of the spin-1/2 kagomé antiferromagnets. In a magnetic field B, we show that the state with Fermi pocket is unstable to the Landau level (LL) state. The LL state breaks the spin rotation around the axis of the magnetic field. We find that the LL state has an in-plane 120° q=0 magnetization M which scales with the external field M∼B[subscript α], where α is a universal number of the Dirac spin liquid. We discuss the related experimental implications which can be used to detect the possible Dirac spin liquid phase in herbertsmithite ZnCu[subscript 3](OH)[subscript 6]C[subscript l2].