Evidence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase in a frustrated magnet
Open Access
- 6 November 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 11 (1), 1-6
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19380-x
Abstract
The Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) mechanism, building upon proliferation of topological defects in 2D systems, is the first example of phase transition beyond the Landau-Ginzburg paradigm of symmetry breaking. Such a topological phase transition has long been sought yet undiscovered directly in magnetic materials. Here, we pin down two transitions that bound a BKT phase in an ideal 2D frustrated magnet TmMgGaO4, via nuclear magnetic resonance under in-plane magnetic fields, which do not disturb the low-energy electronic states and allow BKT fluctuations to be detected sensitively. Moreover, by applying out-of-plane fields, we find a critical scaling behavior of the magnetic susceptibility expected for the BKT transition. The experimental findings can be explained by quantum Monte Carlo simulations applied on an accurate triangular-lattice Ising model of the compound which hosts a BKT phase. These results provide a concrete example for the BKT phase and offer an ideal platform for future investigations on the BKT physics in magnetic materials.Keywords
Funding Information
- Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (2016YFA0300502, 2016YFA0300504)
- Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (11574359, 11674370, 11822405, 11674157, 11974036, 11834014, 11874115, 51872328)
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