Magnon spectrum of the Weyl semimetal half-Heusler compound GdPtBi

Sukhanov AS, Onykiienko YA, Bewley R, Shekhar C, Felser C, Inosov DS (2020)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Journal

Physical Review B American Physical Society

Book Volume: 101

Article Number: 014417

Journal Issue: 1

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.101.014417

Abstract

The compound GdPtBi is known as a material where the nontrivial topology of electronic bands interplays with an antiferromagnetic order, which leads to the emergence of many interesting magnetotransport phenomena. Although the magnetic structure of the compound was previously reliably determined, the magnetic interactions responsible for this type of order have remained controversial. In the present study, we employed time-of-flight inelastic neutron scattering to map out the low-temperature spectrum of spin excitations in single-crystalline GdPtBi. The observed spectra reveal two spectrally sharp dispersive spin-wave modes, which reflects the multidomain state of the k=(121212) fcc antiferromagnet in the absence of a symmetry-breaking magnetic field. The magnon dispersion reaches an energy of ∼1.1meV and features a gap of ∼0.15meV. Using linear spin-wave theory, we determine the main magnetic microscopic parameters of the compound that provide good agreement between the simulated spectra and the experimental data. We show that GdPtBi is well within the (121212) phase and is dominated by second-neighbor interactions, thus featuring low frustration.

Involved external institutions

Max-Planck-Institut für Chemische Physik fester Stoffe (MPI CPfS) / Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids DE Germany (DE) Technische Universität Dresden DE Germany (DE) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory GB United Kingdom (GB)

How to cite

APA:

Sukhanov, A.S., Onykiienko, Y.A., Bewley, R., Shekhar, C., Felser, C., & Inosov, D.S. (2020). Magnon spectrum of the Weyl semimetal half-Heusler compound GdPtBi. Physical Review B, 101(1). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.101.014417

MLA:

Sukhanov, A. S., et al. "Magnon spectrum of the Weyl semimetal half-Heusler compound GdPtBi." Physical Review B 101.1 (2020).

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