• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.207201
• Corpus ID: 226979819

Magnetization Process of Atacamite: A Case of Weakly Coupled S=1/2 Sawtooth Chains.

@article{Heinze2019MagnetizationPO,
  title={Magnetization Process of Atacamite: A Case of Weakly Coupled S=1/2 Sawtooth Chains.},
  author={L. Heinze and Harald O. Jeschke and Igor I. Mazin and Alexandros Metavitsiadis and Manfred Reehuis and R. Feyerherm and J. Hoffmann and Maciej Bartkowiak and Oleksandr Prokhnenko and Anja U. B. Wolter and Xiaohong Ding and Vivien S. Zapf and C. Corval{\'a}n Moya and Franziska Weickert and Marcelo Jaime and Kirrily C. Rule and D. Menzel and Roser Valent'i and Wolfram Brenig and S. S{\"u}llow},
  journal={Physical review letters},
  year={2019},
  volume={126 20},
  pages={
          207201
        }
}

• L. Heinze, H. Jeschke, +17 authors S. Süllow
• Published 16 April 2019
• Materials Science
• Physical review letters

We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of the mineral atacamite Cu_{2}Cl(OH)_{3}. Density-functional theory yields a Hamiltonian describing anisotropic sawtooth chains with weak 3D connections. Experimentally, we fully characterize the antiferromagnetically ordered state. Magnetic order shows a complex evolution with the magnetic field, while, starting at 31.5 T, we observe a plateaulike magnetization at about M_{sat}/2. Based on complementary theoretical approaches, we show that the latter is unrelated to the known magnetization plateau of a sawtooth chain. Instead, we provide evidence that the magnetization process in atacamite is a field-driven canting of a 3D network of weakly coupled sawtooth chains that form giant moments.