Low-Energy Excitations in Quantum Spin Liquids Identified by Optical Spectroscopy

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 121; no. 5; p. 056402
• Main Authors: Pustogow, A, Saito, Y, Zhukova, E, Gorshunov, B, Kato, R, Lee, T-H, Fratini, S, Dobrosavljević, V, Dressel, M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 03.08.2018
• ISSN: 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.056402

The electrodynamic response of organic spin liquids with highly frustrated triangular lattices has been measured in a wide energy range. While the overall optical spectra of these Mott insulators are governed by transitions between the Hubbard bands, distinct in-gap excitations can be identified at low temperatures and frequencies, which we attribute to the quantum-spin-liquid state. For the strongly correlated β^{'}-EtMe_{3}Sb[Pd(dmit)_{2}]_{2}, we discover enhanced conductivity below 175  cm^{-1}, comparable to the energy of the magnetic coupling J≈250  K. For ω→0, these low-frequency excitations vanish faster than the charge-carrier response subject to Mott-Hubbard correlations, resulting in a dome-shaped band peaked at 100  cm^{-1}. Possible relations to spinons, magnons, and disorder are discussed.