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Raman fingerprints of fractionalized Majorana excitations in the honeycomb iridate Ag3 LiIr2 O6
Journal
Physical Review B
ISSN
24699950
Date Issued
2022-06-15
Author(s)
Pal, Srishti
Kumar, Vinod
Panda, Debendra Prasad
Sundaresan, A.
Mahajan, Avinash V.
Muthu, D. V.S.
Sood, A. K.
Abstract
We report low-temperature (down to ∼5 K) Raman signatures of the recently discovered intercalated honeycomb magnet Ag3LiIr2O6, a putative Kitaev quantum spin liquid (QSL) candidate. The Kitaev QSL is predicted to host Majorana fermions as its emergent elementary excitations through a thermal fractionalization of entangled spins S=1/2. We observe evidence of this fractionalization in the low-energy magnetic continuum whose temperature evolution harbors signatures of the predicted Fermi statistics obeyed by the itinerant Majorana quasiparticles. The magnetic Raman susceptibility evinces a crossover from the conventional to a Kitaev paramagnetic state below the temperature of ∼80 K. Additionally, the development of the Fano asymmetry in the low-frequency phonon mode and the enhancement of integrated Raman susceptibilities below the crossover temperature signifies prominent coupling between the vibrational and Majorana fermionic excitations.
Volume
105
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