Impurity-induced magnetic order in low-dimensional spin-gapped materials.
We have studied the effect of nonmagnetic Zn impurities in the coupled spin ladder Bi(Cu_{1-x}Zn_{x})_{2}PO_{6} using ;{31}P NMR, muon spin resonance (microSR), and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that the impurities induce in their vicinity antiferromagnetic polarizations, extending over a few unit cells. At low temperature, these extended moments freeze in a process which is found universal among various other spin-gapped compounds: isolated ladders, Haldane, or spin-Peierls chains. This allows us to propose a simple common framework to explain the generic low-temperature impurity-induced freezings observed in low-dimensional spin-gapped materials.
Bobroff
J
J
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud, UMR-8502 CNRS, 91405 Orsay, France.
Laflorencie
N
N
Alexander
L K
LK
Mahajan
A V
AV
Koteswararao
B
B
Mendels
P
P