Physical review. B./Physical review. B
High-field NMR study on the topologically nontrivial 1/3 magnetization plateau state in doped Na 2 Cu 3 Ge 4 − x Si x O 12
Yuyan Han, Bocheng Yu, Zan Du, Langsheng Ling, Lei Zhang, Wei Tong, Chuanying Xi, Jinglei Zhang, Tian Shang, Li Pi, Long Ma
Abstract
The spin-1/2 trimer system ${\mathrm{Na}}_{2}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{3}{\mathrm{Ge}}_{4}{\mathrm{O}}_{12}$ is proposed to host topologically nontrivial 1/3 magnetization $(M)$ plateau state. In this paper, we report a high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) study on the low-energy spin excitations of the $1/3\text{\ensuremath{-}}M$ plateau state in ${\mathrm{Na}}_{2}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{3}{\mathrm{Ge}}_{4}{\mathrm{O}}_{12}$ and Si-doped samples. First, the spin excitation gap supporting the high-field Haldane phase is indicated by the thermally activated behavior of spin-lattice relaxation rates in the $1/3\text{\ensuremath{-}}M$ plateau state. Second, by substituting ${\mathrm{Ge}}^{4+}$ with ${\mathrm{Si}}^{4+}$, the critical field for the 1/3-$M$ plateau significantly decreases, e.g., ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}{H}_{c}=17$ T in the $x=1.0$ sample, which results from the suppressed intertrimer coupling ${J}_{2}$. The gapped spin excitation is observed above 17 T whose size shows the temperature-dependent behavior for ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}H\ensuremath{\ge}25.72$ T. These observations support the topological nontrivial characteristic of the $1/3\text{\ensuremath{-}}M$ plateau state.