Speaker: Tai Kong (University of Arizona)

Host: Paul Canfield

Title: Frustrate a magnet

Abstract: Significant part of material research’s mission is to explore and understand the physical properties of materials. The magnetic property will be the focus of this talk. In addition to commonly used ferromagnetism, the arrangement of spins can be quite diverse and closely related to other emerging phenomena. Particularly, when competing magnetic interactions are present in a solid, the ground state can be tuned away from a long-range ordering. In geometrically frustrated magnets, such competing magnetic interaction is achieved by including a triangular motif in the magnetic sublattice. Magnets with a triangular lattice or a Kagome lattice, for example, are intensively studied for their potential frustration-induced quantum magnetism phases. Considering that one triangle is sufficient to introduce frustration, there are more lattice types that can host geometrical frustration. A Shastry-Sutherland (SS) lattice, which can be viewed as a combination of square and triangular motifs, is one of this geometrically frustrated lattice types. In this talk, I will present our recent work on a new SS magnetic system. Their physical properties will be discussed in the context of geometrical frustration, quantum criticality and magnetic dimmers. More lattice types that can potentially host geometrical frustration and their corresponding material candidates will be presented at the end of this talk.