Stripe magnetic order and field-induced quantum criticality in the perfect triangular-lattice antiferromagnet CsCeSe2

• Published in: Physical review. B 2024-08, Vol.110 (5)
• Main Authors: Xie, Tao, Zhao, N., Gozel, S., Xing, Jie, Avdoshenko, S. M., Taddei, K. M., Kolesnikov, A. I., Sanjeewa, L. D., Ma, Peiyue, Harrison, N., dela Cruz, C., Wu, L., Sefat, Athena S., Chernyshev, A. L., Läuchli, A. M., Podlesnyak, A., Nikitin, S. E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Exact diagonalization; Frustrated magnetism; Magnetic order; Magnetic phase transitions; Neutron scattering; Quantum criticality
• ISSN: 2469-9950
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.110.054445

The two-dimensional triangular-lattice antiferromagnet (TLAF) is a textbook example of frustrated magnetic systems. Despite its simplicity, the TLAF model exhibits a highly rich and complex magnetic phase diagram, featuring numerous distinct ground states that can be stabilized through frustrated next-nearest-neighbor couplings or anisotropy. In this paper, we report low-temperature magnetic properties of the TLAF material CsCeSe2. The inelastic neutron scattering (INS) together with specific heat measurements and density functional theory calculations of crystalline electric field suggest that the ground state of Ce ions is a Kramers doublet with strong easy-plane anisotropy. Elastic neutron scattering measurements demonstrate the presence of stripe-yz magnetic order that develops below TN = 0.35K, with the zero-field ordered moment of mCe ≈ 0.65μB. Application of magnetic field first increases the ordering temperature by about 20% at the intermediate field region and eventually suppresses the stripe order in favor of the field-polarized ferromagnetic state via a continuous quantum phase transition (QPT). The field-induced response demonstrates sizable anisotropy for different in-plane directions, B ∥ a and B ⊥ ⁢a, which indicates the presence of bond-dependent coupling in the spin Hamiltonian. As a result, we further show theoretically that the presence of anisotropic bond-dependent interactions can change the universality class of QPT for B ∥ a and B ⊥ ⁢a.