Low temperature specific heat of Yb2Ti2O7 single crystals
S. J. Li,
H. L. Che,
J. C. Wu,
X. Zhao,
X. F. Sun
Affiliations
S. J. Li
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, People’s Republic of China
H. L. Che
School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, People’s Republic of China
J. C. Wu
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, People’s Republic of China
X. Zhao
School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, People’s Republic of China
X. F. Sun
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, People’s Republic of China
We study the specific heat of Yb2Ti2O7 single crystals at low temperatures down to 0.4 K and in magnetic fields along the [110] crystalline direction. There is a small peak near 0.4 K at low magnetic fields, signaturing a first-order transition, and its field dependence is consistent with that for H || [100] but different from that for H || [111]. The experimental data also show a broad peak at about 2 K, which has a nonmonotonic change with increasing field. This road peak is originated from the spin correlations and its field dependence can be understood from the recent numerical linked-cluster calculations [Hayre et al., Phys. Rev. B 87, 184423 (2013)].
