Impurity-induced magnetic order in low-dimensional spin-gapped materials

We have studied the effect of nonmagnetic Zn impurities in the coupled spin ladder Bi(Cu_{1-x}Zn_{x})_{2}PO_{6} using ;{31}P NMR, muon spin resonance (microSR), and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that the impurities induce in their vicinity antiferromagnetic polarizations, extendi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2009-07, Vol.103 (4), p.047201-047201, Article 047201
Main Authors: Bobroff, J, Laflorencie, N, Alexander, L K, Mahajan, A V, Koteswararao, B, Mendels, P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Physics
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Summary:We have studied the effect of nonmagnetic Zn impurities in the coupled spin ladder Bi(Cu_{1-x}Zn_{x})_{2}PO_{6} using ;{31}P NMR, muon spin resonance (microSR), and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that the impurities induce in their vicinity antiferromagnetic polarizations, extending over a few unit cells. At low temperature, these extended moments freeze in a process which is found universal among various other spin-gapped compounds: isolated ladders, Haldane, or spin-Peierls chains. This allows us to propose a simple common framework to explain the generic low-temperature impurity-induced freezings observed in low-dimensional spin-gapped materials.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.103.047201