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We report magnetocaloric and magnetic-torque evidence that in Cs2CuBr4--a geometrically frustrated Heisenberg S=1/2 triangular-lattice antiferromagnet--quantum fluctuations stabilize a series of spin states at simple increasing fractions of the saturation magnetization Ms. Only the first of these states--at M=1/3Ms--has been theoretically predicted. We discuss how the higher fraction quantum states might arise and propose model spin arrangements. We argue that the first-order nature of the transitions into those states is due to strong lowering of the energies by quantum fluctuations, with implications for the general character of quantum phase transitions in geometrically frustrated systems.

We report magnetocaloric and magnetic-torque evidence that in Cs2CuBr4 -a geometrically frustrated Heisenberg S = 1 2 triangular-lattice antiferromagnet -quantum fluctuations stabilize a series of spin states at simple increasing fractions of the saturation magnetization Ms. Only the first of these states -at M = 1 3 Ms -has been theoretically predicted. We discuss how the higher fraction quantum states might arise and propose model spin arrangements. We argue that the first-order nature of the transitions into those states is due to strong lowering of the energies by quantum fluctuations, with implications for the general character of quantum phase transitions in geometrically frustrated systems.

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The effects of confinement, disorder, and reduced dimensionality upon quantum fluids have been studied by the adsorption of liquid helium in porous media. The effects of extreme, nanoscale confinement upon its microscopic excitations are not presently understood. Several previous experiments have suggested that, at sufficiently low temperature, the roton mean free path is set by the restricted geometry. Here we show that the lifetime of the roton excitation is unaffected when superfluid helium is confined within cylindrical pores only a few nanometers in diameter. The temperature-dependence of its lifetime are found to be identical to the bulk fluid, implying that the lifetime is not set by the scale of the confinement. Our results demonstrate that the rotons in the pore center propagate without being modified by the confining media, unlike the collective excitations of classical fluids.

We have performed time-of-flight neutron scattering measurements on powder samples of the unconventional spin-Peierls compound TiOBr using the fine-resolution Fermi chopper spectrometer (SEQUOIA) at the SNS. These measurements reveal two branches of magnetic excitations within the commensurate and incommensurate spin-Peierls phases, which we associate with n = 1 and n = 2 triplet excitations out of the singlet ground state. These measurements represent the first direct measure of the singlet-triplet energy gap in TiOBr, which is determined to be Eg = 21.2±1.0 meV.

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