Degeneracy of the 1/8 plateau and antiferromagnetic phases in the Shastry-Sutherland magnet TmB4
Authors: J. Trinh, S. Mitra, C. Panagopoulos, T. Kong, P. Canfield and A. Ramirez
Published in: Physical Review Letters, 121, 167203, 2018.
The 1/8 fractional plateau phase (1/8-FPP) in Shastry-Sutherland Lattice (SSL) spin systems has been viewed an exemplar of emergence on an Archimedean lattice. Here we explore this phase in the Ising magnet TmB4 using high-resolution specific heat (C) and magnetization (M) in the field-temperature plane. We show that the 1/8-FPP is smoothly connected to the antiferromagnetic (AF) phase on ramping the field from H = 0. Thus, the 1/8-FPP is not a distinct ground state of TmB4. The implication of these results for Heisenberg spins on the SSL is discussed.
