@article{e4fbe719b1ea45f9a7fd08688bed4867,
title = "Signatures of a magnetic field-induced unconventional nematic liquid in the frustrated and anisotropic spin-chain cuprate LiCuSbO4",
abstract = "Modern theories of quantum magnetism predict exotic multipolar states in weakly interacting strongly frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor (NN) inchain exchange in high magnetic fields. Experimentally these states remained elusive so far. Here we report strong indications of a magnetic field-induced nematic liquid arising above a field of ~13 T in the edge-sharing chain cuprate LiSbCuO4 = LiCuSbO4. This interpretation is based on the observation of a field induced spin-gap in the measurements of the 7Li NMR spin relaxation rate T 1 -1 as well as a contrasting field-dependent power-law behavior of T 1 -1 vs. T and is further supported by static magnetization and ESR data. An underlying theoretical microscopic approach favoring a nematic scenario is based essentially on the NN XYZ exchange anisotropy within a model for frustrated spin-1/2 chains and is investigated by the DMRG technique. The employed exchange parameters are justified qualitatively by electronic structure calculations for LiCuSbO4.",
author = "Grafe, {H. J.} and S. Nishimoto and M. Iakovleva and E. Vavilova and L. Spillecke and A. Alfonsov and Sturza, {M. I.} and S. Wurmehl and H. Nojiri and H. Rosner and J. Richter and R{\"o}{\ss}ler, {U. K.} and Drechsler, {S. L.} and V. Kataev and B. B{\"u}chner",
note = "Funding Information: The authors thank C. Blum and L. Giebeler for assistance with the XRD measurements, and A. Wolter-Giraud, F. Hammerath, Y. Utz and A. Smirnov for useful discussions. This work has been supported in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through grants SFB 1143 (S.N.), KA 1694/8-1 (V.K.), GR 3330/4-1 (H.-J.G.), through the Emmy Noether Programme in the projects WU595/3-1, and WU595/3-2 (S.W.). The work of E.V. and M.I. has been supported in part by project RFBR 14-02-01194. V.K. gratefully acknowledges his stay at Tohoku University supported by ICC-IMR. H.N. acknowledges Kakenhi 16H01060. S.-L.D. and S.N. thank R.O. Kuzian, J. van den Brink, C. Agrapidis, A. Tsirlin, A. Zvyagin, P. Mendels, H. K{\"u}hne, S. Zvyagin, M. Zhitomirsky, and especially O. Starykh for critical and valuable discussions and stimulating interest. The publication of this article was funded by the Open Access Fund of the Leibniz Association. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 The Author(s).",
year = "2017",
month = dec,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1038/s41598-017-06525-0",
language = "English",
volume = "7",
journal = "Scientific Reports",
issn = "2045-2322",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "1",
}