Quantum spin liquid on a 3D bipartite lattice of spin trimers stabilized by enhanced effective anisotropy

TL;DR

This study identifies a 3D bipartite quantum spin liquid candidate in a spin-trimer magnet, stabilized by enhanced effective anisotropy, showing no symmetry-breaking down to very low temperatures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that weak microscopic anisotropy can be amplified at the trimer level to stabilize a gapless quantum spin liquid in a 3D bipartite lattice.

Findings

No spin freezing or symmetry-breaking observed down to 20 mK.

The ground state is gapless with algebraic spin autocorrelations.

Effective anisotropy is strongly enhanced from microscopic interactions.

Abstract

Quantum spin liquids (QSLs) represent highly entangled states of matter in which frustration-induced quantum fluctuations suppress any symmetry-breaking phase transition down to absolute zero, giving rise to fractionalized excitations and emergent gauge fields. Theoretically, bond anisotropy can stabilize QSLs even on bipartite lattices, as exemplified by the Kitaev honeycomb model; however, no material has so far been established to realize such a state as its true ground state. Here we identify the three-dimensional spin-trimer magnet KBa$_3$Ca$_4$Cu$_3$V$_7$O$_{28}$ as a promising candidate for a bipartite quantum spin liquid persisting to the lowest temperatures. Strongly coupled Cu$^{2+}$ trimers form effective pseudospin-1/2 degrees of freedom upon cooling, which in turn constitute a three-dimensional bipartite network. Bulk thermodynamic measurements, neutron scattering, $\mu$SR, and NMR detect no spin freezing or symmetry-breaking phase transition down to 20 mK, but instead reveal a gapless dynamical ground state with algebraic spin autocorrelations. Complementary Monte Carlo and exact-diagonalization calculations show that this state is stabilized by a strong enhancement of effective anisotropy: a weak microscopic Cu-Cu exchange anisotropy of approximately 15 percent is generically amplified at the trimer level, producing effective pseudospin-pseudospin interaction anisotropies of 60 to 100 percent. Our results establish trimer-based networks as a promising platform for realizing anisotropy-stabilized quantum entangled states, even in three-dimensional bipartite systems with only weak microscopic anisotropy.