Magnetic Ground State of the Kitaev Na2Co2TeO6 Spin Liquid Candidate

Published

June 2, 2023

Author(s)

Weiliang Yao, Yang Zhao, Yiming Qiu, Christian Balz, Ross Stewart, Jeffrey Lynn, Yuan Li

Abstract

As a candidate Kitaev material, Na₂Co₂TeO₆ exhibits intriguing magnetism on a honeycomb lattice that is believed to be C₃-symmetric. Here we report a neutron diffraction study of its high-quality single crystals under a-axis magnetic fields. While fields up to 10 Tesla suppress long-range antiferromagnetic order by causing appreciable spin polarization, the suppression is only incomplete, and the system recovers to its original state upon removal of the field, only losing some subtle c-axis correlations. The high-field state is thus not yet a spin liquid. Given the nominal C₃ symmetry, the failure of the field to repopulate magnetic domains leaves only two possibilities open: either the domains are pinned by the lattice if they both in fact lack C₃ symmetry, or they both have C₃ symmetry. The latter scenario, if true, invokes rethinking about many candidate Kitaev materials.

Citation

Physical Review Research

Volume

5

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

Kitaev spin liquid, neutron diffraction

Citation

Yao, W. , Zhao, Y. , Qiu, Y. , Balz, C. , Stewart, R. , Lynn, J. and Li, Y. (2023), Magnetic Ground State of the Kitaev Na₂Co₂TeO₆ Spin Liquid Candidate, Physical Review Research, [online], https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L022045 (Accessed October 20, 2025)