Multiferroic behavior in perovskite-related metal-organic frameworks of general formula [(CH(3))(2)NH(2)]M(HCOO)(3), where M = Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni, is reported. All four compounds exhibit paraelectric-antiferroelectric phase transition behavior in the temperature range 160-185 K (Mn: 185 K, Fe: 160 K; Co: 165 K; Ni: 180 K); this is associated with an order-disorder transition involving the hydrogen bonded dimethylammonium cations. On further cooling, the compounds become canted weak ferromagnets below 40 K. This research opens up a new class of multiferroics in which the electrical ordering is achieved by means of hydrogen bonding.

A quantum spin liquid (QSL) is an exotic state of matter in which electrons' spins are quantum entangled over long distances, but do not show symmetry-breaking magnetic order in the zero-temperature limit [1]. The observation of QSL states is a central aim of experimental physics, because they host collective excitations that transcend our knowledge of quantum matter [2, 3]; however, examples in real materials are scarce [4]. Here, we report neutron-scattering measurements on YbMgGaO 4 , a QSL candidate in which Yb 3+ ions with effective spin-1/2 occupy a triangular lattice [5,6]. Our measurements reveal a continuum of magnetic excitations-the essential experimental hallmark of a QSL [7,8]-at very low temperature (≈ 0.06 K). The origin of this peculiar excitation spectrum is a crucial question, because isotropic nearest-neighbor interactions do not yield a QSL ground state on the triangular lattice [9]. Using measurements of the magnetic excitations close to the field-polarized state, we identify antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interactions [10,11,12,13,14] in the presence of planar anisotropy[6] as key ingredients for QSL formation in YbMgGaO 4 .1 arXiv:1607.03231v1 [cond-mat.str-el]

Many correlated electron materials, such as high-temperature superconductors 1 , geometrically frustrated oxides 2 and lowdimensional magnets 3,4 , are still objects of fruitful study because of the unique properties that arise owing to poorly understood many-body effects. Heavy-fermion metals 5 -materials that have high effective electron masses due to those effects-represent a class of materials with exotic properties, ranging from unusual magnetism, unconventional superconductivity and 'hidden' order parameters 6 . The heavy-fermion superconductor URu 2 Si 2 has held the attention of physicists for the past two decades owing to the presence of a 'hidden-order' phase below 17.5 K. Neutron scattering measurements indicate that the ordered moment is 0.03μ B , much too small to account for the large heat-capacity anomaly at 17.5 K. We present recent neutron scattering experiments that unveil a new piece of this puzzle-the spin-excitation spectrum above 17.5 K exhibits well-correlated, itinerant-like spin excitations up to at least 10 meV, emanating from incommensurate wavevectors. The large entropy change associated with the presence of an energy gap in the excitations explains the reduction in the electronic specific heat through the transition.The central issue in URu 2 Si 2 concerns the identification of the order parameter that explains the reduction in the specific heat coefficient, γ = C/T, and thus the change in entropy, through the transition at 17.5 K (ref. 6). Numerous speculations about the ground state have been advanced, from quadrupolar ordering 7 , to spin-density wave formation 8 , to 'orbital currents' 9 to account for the missing entropy. Here, we present cold-neutron time-offlight spectroscopy results that shed some light on the 'hiddenorder' (HO) in URu 2 Si 2 . We have carried out experiments above and below the ordering temperature to measure how the spin excitations evolve. It is clear from our data that above T 0 the spectrum is dominated by fast, itinerant-like spin excitations emanating from incommensurate wavevectors at positions located 0.4a* from the antiferromagnetic (AF) points. From the group velocity and temperature dependence of these modes, we surmise that these are heavy-quasiparticle excitations that form below the 'coherence temperature' and play a crucial role in the formation of the heavy-fermion and HO states. The gapping of these excitations, which corresponds to a loss of accessible states, accounts for the reduction in γ through the transition at 17.5 K. Figure 1 shows the excitation spectrum of URu 2 Si 2 at 1.5 K in the H00 plane. The characteristic gaps at ∼2 meV at the AF zone centre (1, 0, 0) and ∼4 meV at the incommensurate wavevectors (0.6, 0, 0) and (1.4, 0, 0) have been known for some time 10 . The incommensurate wavevector corresponds to a displacement of ∼0.4a * from the AF zone centres (that is, where h + k + l = an odd integer, and is thus forbidden in the body-centred-cubic chemical structure). A scenario for this modesoftening at the incommensurate positi...

In this Letter, we report a new spin ice--Pr2Sn2O7--which appears to have enhanced residual entropy due to the dynamic nature of the spins. Neutron scattering experiments show that at 200 mK, there is a significant amount of magnetic diffuse scattering which can be fit to the dipolar spin-ice model. However, these short-ranged ordered spins have a quasielastic response that is atypical of the canonical spin ices, and suggests that the ground state is dynamic (i.e., composed of locally ordered two-in-two-out spin configurations that can tunnel between energetically equivalent orientations). We report this as an example of a dynamic spin ice down to 200 mK.

There has been an increased focus on understanding the energetics of structures with unconventional ordering (for example, correlated disorder that is heterogeneous across different length scales). In particular, compounds with the isometric pyrochlore structure, A2B2O7, can adopt a disordered, isometric fluorite-type structure, (A, B)4O7, under extreme conditions. Despite the importance of the disordering process there exists only a limited understanding of the role of local ordering on the energy landscape. We have used neutron total scattering to show that disordered fluorite (induced intrinsically by composition/stoichiometry or at far-from-equilibrium conditions produced by high-energy radiation) consists of a local orthorhombic structural unit that is repeated by a pseudo-translational symmetry, such that orthorhombic and isometric arrays coexist at different length scales. We also show that inversion in isometric spinel occurs by a similar process. This insight provides a new basis for understanding order-to-disorder transformations important for applications such as plutonium immobilization, fast ion conduction, and thermal barrier coatings.

Two B-site ordered double perovskites, La 2 LiReO 6 and Ba 2 YReO 6 , with S = 1 were investigated as geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets, using x-ray and neutron diffraction, superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry, heat capacity, muon spin relaxation ͑SR͒, and 89 Y magic-angle spinning ͑MAS͒ NMR. La 2 LiReO 6 has a monoclinic structure ͑P2 1 / n͒ with cell parameters at room temperature; a = 5.58262͑22͒ Å, b = 5.67582͑20͒ Å, c = 7.88586͑27͒ Å, and ␤ = 90.240͑4͒°. A zero-field cooled/field cooled ͑ZFC/FC͒ divergence at 50 K was observed in the susceptibility. The ZFC susceptibility is zero below ϳ5 K for polycrystalline samples, suggesting a cooperative singlet ground state but weak moments are induced by cooling in very small fields ϳ1 mT. No evidence of long-range ordering is evident in heat capacity, neutrondiffraction, or SR data. The ZF spin dynamics from SR are anomalous and can be fitted to a stretched exponential rather than the Kubo-Toyabe form expected for random frozen spins but the muon spins are decoupled in longitudinal fields ͑LF͒, consistent with spin freezing of the fraction of spins relaxing within the muon time scale. The internal fields sensed by the muons are anomalously small, consistent with an electronic spin-singlet state. Ba 2 YReO 6 is found to be cubic ͑Fm3m͒ with cell parameter a = 8.36278͑2͒ Å at 300 K with no change in symmetry at 3.8 K, at variance with the Jahn-Teller theorem for a t 2g 2 configuration for Re 5+ . 89 Y MAS NMR shows a single peak indicating that Y/Re site disorder is at most 0.5%. The susceptibility shows two broad peaks around 50 and 25 K but no evidence for long-range order from heat capacity, neutron diffraction, or SR. The ZF SR result shows a two-component ground state with both slow and fast relaxations and decoupling results in a 1 kG LF, indicating spin freezing. These results are in sharp contrast to the long-range AF order found in the S =3/ 2 isostructural materials, La 2 LiRuO 6 and Ba 2 YRuO 6 , indicating that the reduction to S = 1 plays a major role in ground state determination.

We present single-crystal neutron scattering measurements of the spin-1/2 equilateral triangular-lattice antiferromagnet Ba3CoSb2O9. Besides confirming that the Co 2+ magnetic moments lie in the ab plane for zero magnetic field and then determining all the exchange parameters of the minimal quasi-2D spin Hamiltonian, we provide conclusive experimental evidence of magnon decay through observation of intrinsic line-broadening. Through detailed comparisons with the linear and nonlinear spin-wave theories, we also point out that the large-S approximation, which is conventionally employed to predict magnon decay in noncollinear magnets, is inadequate to explain our experimental observation. Thus, our results call for a new theoretical framework for describing excitation spectra in low-dimensional frustrated magnets under strong quantum effects. The equilateral triangular-lattice quantum antiferromagnet Ba 3 CoSb 2 O 9 was synthesized recently [24][25][26][27][28][29]. The Co 2+ ion has a Kramers doublet ground-state due to the spin-orbit coupling, and this doublet can be described as an effective spin-1/2 moment. In addition, the high symmetry of the hexagonal crystal structure, P6 3 / mmc [24-28], forbids DM interaction for pairs up to third nearest-neighbor (NN) in the same abplane and between any pair of spins along the c-axis [25].Powder neutron diffraction measurements presented the noncollinear 120• structure with the magnetic wavevector Q = (1/3, 1/3, 1) [24]. The Néel temperature was found to be ≈ 3.8 K and a rich temperature-magnetic field phase diagram was reported up to 32 T [25][26][27][28]. Electronic spin resonance (ESR) [27] and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) [28] measurements suggested a spin model with small easy-plane exchange anisotropy and an exchange interaction along the caxis much weaker than the NN intralayer exchange. This observation is consistent with the alternation of magnetic (Co 2+ ) and nonmagnetic (Sb 2 O 9 bioctahedra) layers along the cdirection. While more precise determination of the model parameters requires inelastic neutron scattering (INS) measurements, such detailed information is indeed physically relevant.

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