Scientific Achievement
Phonons in a-RuCl3 that either propagate or vibrate in the out-of-plane direction exhibit significantly reduced velocities and therefore have the potential to dominate observability of the elusive half-integer plateau in the thermal Hall conductance.
Significance and Impact
The vibrational excitation spectrum (phonon structure) of a-RuCl3 was investigated via inelastic neutron scattering experiments and density functional theory calculations, which showed excellent agreement.
Research Details
- Presented comprehensive measurement of the space group for a-RuCl3 using neutron diffraction
Developed novel strategy for resolving interlayer structure of quasi 2D materials via inelastic neutron scattering against phonons and explained why Majorana fermions in a-RuCl3 are sensitive to interlayer structure
Mu, Sai, Dixit, Kiranmayi D., Wang, Xiaoping, Abernathy, Douglas L., Cao, Huibo, Nagler, Stephen E., Yan, Jiaqiang, Lampen-Kelley, Paula, Mandrus, David, Polanco, Carlos A., Liang, Liangbo, Halász, Gábor B., Cheng, Yongqiang, Banerjee, Arnab, and Berlijn, Tom, "Role of the third dimension in searching for Majorana fermions in α − RuCl 3 via phonons" https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.013067
