4d and 5d compounds as the new frontier of the anisotropic spin physics

Abstract

I perform a series of studies of the magnetism of 4d and 5d transition metal compounds. In particular I concentrate on the realization of anisotropic magnetic Hamiltonians by use of the spin-orbit coupling to tie together the real space geometry and spin space magnetism. In the first part, I derive the magnetic Hamiltonians of Sr2IrO4 and Na2IrO3 from microscopic parameters. The difficulty of these calculation arises from the fact that many microscopic parameters, such as Hund's coupling, spin-orbit coupling, and crystal field distortions are all of the same order and thus have to be treated on an equal footing. The competition and cooperation of these interactions leads to a rich magnetic Hamiltonians with many different anisotropic interactions. My calculations provide a clear dependence of these interactions on the microscopic parameters. This in turn can be used experimentally to single out and enhance given anisotropies by changing the microscopic parameters. In the second part I propose experimental measurements for the anisotropic interactions. In particular I study how different anisotropic interactions contribute to the anisotropy in the Curie-Weiss temperatures of these compounds. I show that the difference of Curie-Weiss temperatures along particular axes gives a way to measure the strength of the anisotropic interactions in the compounds. In the last part, I study how the multitude of the magnetic anisotropies determine the magnetic ground state in 4d and 5d compounds. We have developed a new method to calculate the fluctuational contribution to the free energy in anisotropic Hamiltonians at any temperature within the magnetically ordered phase. The calculation can be done for both classical (which includes only thermal fluctuations) and quantum (quantum and thermal fluctuations) systems. I also study the effects of external magnetic field applied to the nearest neighbor Kitaev-Heisenberg model, a model of particular interest for alpha-RuCl3.