Studying spin diffusion and quantum entanglement with LF-µSR

Abstract

LF-µSR studies have previously been used to study the diffusive 1D motion of solitons and polarons in conducting polymers. This type of study was also applied to investigating the diffusive motion of spinons in spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic chains. Recently the method has been extended to examples of 2D layered triangular spin lattices which can support quantum spin liquid states, such as 1T-TaS2 and YbZnGaO4. These systems are found to show spin dynamics that matches well to 2D spin diffusion, such a model being found to provide a much better fit to the data than previously proposed models for spin correlations in such systems. In YbZnGaO4 the diffusion rate shows a clear crossover between classical and quantum regimes as T falls below the exchange coupling J. That the spin diffusion approach works well in the high T classical region might be expected, but it is found that it also works equally well in the low T quantum region where quantum entanglement controls the spin dynamics. Measurement of the diffusion rate allows a T dependent length scale to be derived from the data that can be assigned to a quantum entanglement length ξ E. Another entanglement measure, the Quantum Fisher Information F Q can also be obtained from the data and its T dependence is compared to that of ξ E.