NMR imaging of the soliton lattice profile in the spin-Peierls compound CuGeO_3

TL;DR

This study uses NMR imaging to visualize the soliton lattice profile in CuGeO3 during a magnetic field-induced transition, providing experimental data to test theoretical models of 1D strongly correlated systems.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed NMR imaging of the soliton lattice in a spin-Peierls compound, linking experimental results with theoretical models of 1D fermionic systems.

Findings

Precise imaging of the soliton profile and magnitude.

Quantitative testing of theoretical models for 1D strongly interacting fermions.

Observation of the transition at a critical magnetic field around 13 Tesla.

Abstract

In the spin-Peierls compound CuGeO$_{3}$, the commensurate-incommensurate transition concerning the modulation of atomic position and the local spin-polarization is fully monitored at T=0 by the application of an external magnetic field ($H$) above a threshold value $H_{c}\simeq $ 13 Tesla. The solitonic profile of the spin-polarization, as well as its absolute magnitude, has been precisely imaged from $^{65}Cu$ NMR lineshapes obtained for $h=(H-H_{c})/H_{c}$ varying from 0.0015 to 2. This offers a unique possibility to test quantitatively the various numerical and analytical methods developed to solve a generic Hamiltonian in 1-D physics, namely strongly interacting fermions in presence of electron-phonon coupling at arbitrary band filling.