High-precision measurement of the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction between two rare-earth ions in a solid

Cyril Laplane, Emmanuel Zambrini Cruzeiro, Florian Fröwis, Philippe Goldner, Mikael Afzelius

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We report on a direct measurement of the pairwise antisymmetric exchange interaction, known as the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction (DMI), in a Nd3+-doped YVO4 crystal. To this end, we introduce a broadband electron spin resonance technique coupled with an optical detection scheme which selectively detects only one Nd3+-Nd3+ pair. Using this technique we can fully measure the spin-spin coupling tensor, allowing us to experimentally determine both the strength and direction of the DMI vector. We believe that this ability to fully determine the interaction Hamiltonian is of interest for studying the numerous magnetic phenomena where the DMI interaction is of fundamental importance, including multiferroics. We also detect a singlet-triplet transition within the pair, with a highly suppressed magnetic-field dependence, which suggests that such systems could form singlet-triplet qubits with long coherence times for quantum information applications.

Original languageEnglish
Article number037203
Number of pages6
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume117
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Jul 2016
Externally publishedYes

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