We study magnetic excitations for anisotropic spin dimer systems. We present a theory that describes not only the lowest-lying excitation mode but also higher-lying modes of the spin dimers, where the latter modes are important for quantum phase transitions driven by magnetic field and pressure in spin-gapped systems. As the most intriguing application, we calculate electron spin resonance (ESR) intensity in the presence of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) interaction, which couples the local triplet with the singlet states of the dimer. The ESR intensities under various configurations of the DM interactions are reported in both disordered and field-induced ordered phases, which are very useful for the analysis of high-field ESR data.
Modern theories of quantum magnetism predict exotic multipolar states in weakly interacting strongly frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains with ferromagnetic nearest neighbor (NN) inchain exchange in high magnetic fields. Experimentally these states remained elusive so far. Here we report the evidence for a long-sought magnetic field-induced nematic state arising above a field of
∼13 T in the edge-sharing chain cuprate LiSbCuO
4 ≡ LiCuSbO
4. This interpretation is based on the observation of a field induced spin-gap in the measurements of the
7Li NMR spin relaxation rate
T1−1 as well as a contrasting field-dependent power-law behavior of
T1−1 vs.
T and is further supported by static magnetization and ESR data. An underlying theoretical microscopic approach favoring a nematic scenario is based essentially on the NN XYZ exchange anisotropy within a model for frustrated spin-1/2 chains. It is investigated by the DMRG technique. The employed exchange parameters are justified qualitatively by electronic structure calculations for LiCuSbO
4.