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Science 21 July 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5478, pp. 419 - 422
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5478.419
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Reports

Holes in a Quantum Spin Liquid

Guangyong Xu,1 G. Aeppli,2 M. E. Bisher,2 C. Broholm,13* J. F. DiTusa,4 C. D. Frost,5 T. Ito,6 K. Oka,6 R. L. Paul,3 H. Takagi,7 M. M. J. Treacy2

Magnetic neutron scattering provides evidence for nucleation of antiferromagnetic droplets around impurities in a doped nickel oxide-based quantum magnet. The undoped parent compound contains a spin liquid with a cooperative singlet ground state and a gap in the magnetic excitation spectrum. Calcium doping creates excitations below the gap with an incommensurate structure factor. We show that weakly interacting antiferromagnetic droplets with a central phase shift of pi  and a size controlled by the correlation length of the quantum liquid can account for the data. The experiment provides a quantitative impression of the magnetic polarization cloud associated with holes in a doped transition metal oxide.

1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
2 NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
3 National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.
4 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
5 ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon OX11 0QX, UK.
6 Electrotechnical Laboratory, Tsukuba 305, Japan.
7 Department of Advanced Materials Science, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo Hongo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: broholm{at}jhu.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Mesoscopic Phase Coherence in a Quantum Spin Fluid.
G. Xu, C. Broholm, Y.-A. Soh, G. Aeppli, J. F. DiTusa, Y. Chen, M. Kenzelmann, C. D. Frost, T. Ito, K. Oka, et al. (2007)
Science 317, 1049-1052
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