Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya anisotropy effect on field-induced magnon condensation in kagome antiferromagnet $\alpha-Cu_3Mg(OH)_6Br_2$

TL;DR

This study investigates how Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya anisotropy influences field-induced magnon condensation in a kagome antiferromagnet, revealing anisotropic behaviors and the robustness of magnon BEC against disorder.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the anisotropic effects of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction on magnon BEC in a kagome antiferromagnet with detailed experimental phase diagrams.

Findings

3D magnon BEC observed for B||c with T_c∝(B_c−B)^{2/3}

Crossover behavior instead of phase transition for B||ab

Magnon BEC scaling is robust against off-stoichiometric disorder

Abstract

We performed a comprehensive electron spin resonance, magnetization and heat capacity study on the field-induced magnetic phase transitions in the kagome antiferromagnet $\alpha-Cu_3Mg(OH)_6Br_2$. With the successful preparation of single crystals, we mapped out the magnetic phase diagrams under the $c$-axis and $ab$-plane directional magnetic fields $B$. For $B\|c$, the three-dimensional (3D) magnon Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is evidenced by the power law scaling of the transition temperature, $T_c\propto (B_c-B)^{2/3}$. For $B\|ab$, the transition from the canted antiferromagetic (CAFM) state to the fully polarized (FP) state is a crossover rather than phase transition, and the characteristic temperature has a significant deviation from the 3D BEC scaling. The different behaviors of the field-induced magnetic transitions for $B\|c$ and $B\|ab$ could result from the Dzyaloshinkii-Moriya (DM) interaction with the DM vector along the $c$-axis, which preserves the $c$-axis directional spin rotation symmetry and breaks the spin rotation symmetry when $B\|ab$. The 3D magnon BEC scaling for $B\|c$ is immune to the off-stoichiometric disorder in our sample $\alpha-Cu_{3.26}Mg_{0.74}(OH)_6Br_2$. Our findings have the potential to shed light on the investigations of the magnetic anisotropy and disorder effects on the field-induced magnon BEC in the quantum antiferromagnet.