Magnetic field-induced evolution of intertwined orders in the Kitaev magnet $\beta$-Li$_2$IrO$_3$

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a magnetic field influences the intertwined magnetic orders in the 3D Kitaev magnet $eta$-Li$_2$IrO$_3$, revealing the role of order intertwining and estimating key exchange parameters.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the zigzag order arises from its intertwining with incommensurate order and magnetization, providing a unified explanation for experimental observations and estimating the exchange interactions.

Findings

Zigzag order is not linearly coupled to the field but emerges from order intertwining.

The incommensurate order declines rapidly with magnetic field, consistent with experiments.

The exchange ratio J ≈ 4K is estimated from the critical field H*.

Abstract

Recent scattering experiments in the 3D Kitaev magnet $\beta$-Li$_2$IrO$_3$ have shown that a relatively weak magnetic field along the crystallographic ${\bf b}$-axis drives the system from its incommensurate counter-rotating order to a correlated paramagnet, with a significant uniform `zigzag' component superimposing the magnetization along the field. Here it is shown that the zigzag order is not emerging from its linear coupling to the field (via a staggered, off-diagonal element of the ${\bf g}$-tensor), but from its intertwining with the incommensurate order and the longitudinal magnetization. The emerging picture explains all qualitative experimental findings at zero and finite fields, including the rapid decline of the incommensurate order with field and the so-called intensity sum rule. The latter are shown to be independent signatures of the smallness of the Heisenberg exchange $J$, compared to the Kitaev coupling $K$ and the off-diagonal anisotropy $\Gamma$. Remarkably, in the regime of interest, the field $H^\ast$ at which the incommensurate component vanishes, depends essentially only on $J$, which allows to extract an estimate of $J\!\simeq\!4K$ from reported measurements of $H^\ast$. We also comment on recent experiments in pressurized $\beta$-Li$_2$IrO$_3$ and conclude that $J$ decreases with pressure.