Experimental consequences of disorder at an antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Disorder is known to have a profound influence on classical phase transitions, and it is anticipated to be even more important for quantum phase transitions. However, experimental investigation of the influence of disorder on phase transitions normally requires numerous samples over the range of disorder. Here, we investigate the field-driven quantum phase transition in the antiferromagnet LiErF4. The isotopic distribution of natural Er permits us to probe the transition in the clean and dirty regimes in the same sample. 167Er, with non-zero nuclear spin on 23% of the Er sites, induces random mass disorder in the dirty (low-temperature) regime. We use specific heat and ac magnetic susceptibility experiments to identify a crossover between the two regimes at T = 150 mK. The critical behavior is consistent with a violation of the Harris criterion in the clean regime and a change of universality class in the dirty regime.
Copyright and License
© The Author(s) 2025.
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Acknowledgement
We are grateful to Patrick Lee and Philip Stamp for insightful discussions, Matthew Libersky for technical assistance in obtaining and analyzing microwave data, and Christopher Simon for technical assistance in the single ion calculation. This work was supported by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Grant #FA9550−25-1-0017, DMS and TFR co-PIs.
Data Availability
The susceptibility and specific heat data generated in this study have been deposited in the CaltechDATA repository under accession code 10.22002/n13wc-zwc92, available at https://data.caltech.edu/records/n13wc-zwc92.
Supplemental Material
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s41467-025-57322-7.pdf
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Additional details
Identifiers
- PMID
- 40038312
- PMCID
- PMC11880509
Related works
- Describes
- Journal Article: https://rdcu.be/eznlP (ReadCube)
- Journal Article: 40038312 (PMID)
- Journal Article: PMC11880509 (PMCID)
- Is supplemented by
- Supplemental Material: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-025-57322-7/MediaObjects/41467_2025_57322_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (URL)
- Dataset: 10.22002/n13wc-zwc92 (DOI)
Funding
- United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- FA9550-25-1-0017
Dates
- Accepted
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2025-02-18
- Available
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2025-03-04Published