24-spin clusters in the mineral boleite: excitations in spin-liquid droplets?
The crystal structure of the mineral boleite contains Cu2+ ions (each with S=1/2) forming truncated cube clusters of linked triangles. Susceptibility, neutron scattering and exact diagonalization calculations suggest that effective S=1/2 degrees of freedom emerge on the triangles, followed by condensation of these into a singlet state at lower temperature. We hypothesize that the resulting cube of effective S=1/2 degrees of freedom is a fragment of the full S=1/2 dimer problem on the cubic lattice, where a spin liquid groundstate exists. The clusters in boleite afford an intermediate situation, accessible to both experiment and exact diagonalization, in which a spin liquid "droplet" can be studied. Here we propose to locate and characterize the expected excitations of individual triangles, and to search for low energy excitations associated with the cooperative singlet state.
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FENNELL Tom; BOEHM Martin; CHRISTENSEN Dreier Erik; Sonja Holm-Dahlin; LEFMANN Kim; PIOVANO Andrea and ROLS Stephane. (2014). 24-spin clusters in the mineral boleite: excitations in spin-liquid droplets?. Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) doi:10.5291/ILL-DATA.4-01-1364
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