Dynamics, Selection Rules and Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions in Strongly Frustrated Magnets

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions influence the magnetic properties and excitations in frustrated spin systems, revealing their significant effects despite being typically weak, and introduces a new mechanism for ESR intensities.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions in specific frustrated magnets and proposes a novel mechanism involving spin-phonon coupling to explain ESR intensities.

Findings

Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions lower symmetry and double low-frequency modes in CuGeO3.

These interactions split magnon modes linearly in SrCu2(BO3)2.

A new spin-phonon coupling mechanism explains ESR intensities.

Abstract

Anisotropic spin-spin interactions of the symmetry described by Dzyaloshinsky and Moriya are generally considered weak, as they depend on the spin-orbit couplings. In frustrated spin systems with singlet ground states they can, however, have rather strong effects. We discuss recent results related to two gapped spin systems: $\rm CuGeO_3$ and $\rm SrCu_2(BO_3)_2$ in particular. In the first compound the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions effectively lower the symmetry of the magnetic unit cell and this leads to doubling of the low frequency mode. In the second case, the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions also split the lowest magnon mode linearly in the spin-orbit coupling. In addition, the relatively weak Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions can dominate the dispersion. Consideration of the selection rules for optical transitions show that while the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions can explain much of the dynamics, they do not explain the observed transition amplitudes. This leads to a review of recent calculations of anisotropic spin-phonon couplings. We discuss how this leads to a novel mechanism to explain the ESR intensities in the spin gap systems discussed. Selection rules for this novel mechanism involving coupling to the electric field of the resonant probe are discussed and relation to polarised neutron experiments briefly mentioned.