The layered honeycomb magnetα-RuCl3has attracted intense scrutiny as a prime candidate for realizing the Kitaev quantum spin liquid,yet a consensus on its microscopic Hamiltonian remains elusive due to the materia...The layered honeycomb magnetα-RuCl3has attracted intense scrutiny as a prime candidate for realizing the Kitaev quantum spin liquid,yet a consensus on its microscopic Hamiltonian remains elusive due to the material's extreme sensitivity to structural details.Here,we report a comprehensive reexamination of the low-temperature crystallographic and magnetic structures of high-qualityα-RuCl3single crystals using unpolarized and polarized neutron diffraction.We confirm a sharp,first-order structural phase transition to the rhombohedral R3 space group with a pronounced thermal hysteresis.Crucially,using both spherical and longitudinal neutron polarization analysis,we determine the 3D orientation of the ordered magnetic moment without the ambiguity typically arising from domain distributions.We find that the Ru3+magnetic moments in the zigzag phase are tilted by 15.7°out of the hexagonal plane and,remarkably,exhibit an additional in-plane twist of-13.8°.This“tilted and twistedžgeometry differentiates the ground state from the previously reported models based on unpolarized neutron diffraction or resonant elastic X-ray scattering(REXS)analysis.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.12505350)supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(Grant No.2022YFA1405700)+2 种基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.12375298)the postdoctoral funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skøodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No.101034266support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft(DFG,German Research Foundation)-Project number 277146847-CRC 1238,project B04。
摘要The layered honeycomb magnetα-RuCl3has attracted intense scrutiny as a prime candidate for realizing the Kitaev quantum spin liquid,yet a consensus on its microscopic Hamiltonian remains elusive due to the material's extreme sensitivity to structural details.Here,we report a comprehensive reexamination of the low-temperature crystallographic and magnetic structures of high-qualityα-RuCl3single crystals using unpolarized and polarized neutron diffraction.We confirm a sharp,first-order structural phase transition to the rhombohedral R3 space group with a pronounced thermal hysteresis.Crucially,using both spherical and longitudinal neutron polarization analysis,we determine the 3D orientation of the ordered magnetic moment without the ambiguity typically arising from domain distributions.We find that the Ru3+magnetic moments in the zigzag phase are tilted by 15.7°out of the hexagonal plane and,remarkably,exhibit an additional in-plane twist of-13.8°.This“tilted and twistedžgeometry differentiates the ground state from the previously reported models based on unpolarized neutron diffraction or resonant elastic X-ray scattering(REXS)analysis.