Local Susceptibility of the Yb2Ti2O7 Rare Earth Pyrochlore Computed from a Hamiltonian with Anisotropic Exchange

TL;DR

This study computes the local susceptibility of Yb2Ti2O7 using an anisotropic exchange Hamiltonian, showing good agreement with experimental data and highlighting the importance of anisotropic interactions in this material.

Contribution

The paper introduces a detailed microscopic Hamiltonian with anisotropic exchange for Yb2Ti2O7 and demonstrates its effectiveness in accurately predicting local susceptibility.

Findings

Anisotropic exchange model matches experimental susceptibility data

Isotropic exchange model is inconsistent with measurements

Highlights the significance of anisotropic interactions in Yb2Ti2O7

Abstract

The rare earth pyrochlore magnet Yb2Ti2O7 is among a handful of materials that apparently exhibit no long range order down to the lowest explored temperatures and well below the Curie-Weiss temperature. Paramagnetic neutron scattering on a single crystal sample has revealed the presence of anisotropic correlations and recent work has led to the proposal of a detailed microscopic Hamiltonian for this material involving significantly anisotropic exchange. In this article, we compute the local sublattice susceptibility of Yb2Ti2O7 from the proposed model and compare with the measurements of Cao and coworkers [Physical Review Letters, {103}, 056402 (2009)], finding quite good agreement. In contrast, a model with only isotropic exchange and long range magnetostatic dipoles gives rise to a local susceptiblity that is inconsistent with the data.