Magnetism of classical pyrochlore antiferromagnet Na3Mn(CO3)2Cl

Abstract

Pyrochlore antiferromagnets have attracted interests in terms of unconventional ground states and spin excitations owing to competing interactions. When its magnetism is dominated by classical spins coupled by Heisenberg interactions, a spin liquid state is expected as its ground state because of infinite degeneracy in the ground state (R. Moessner and J. T. Chalker, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 2929 (1998); Phys. Rev. B 58, 12049 (1998).). In this research, we report structural and magnetic properties together with low-temperature neutron diffraction patterns on a new pyrochlore antiferromagnet Na3Mn(CO3)2Cl. The structure of Na3Mn(CO3)2Cl is isotypic with that of the Co-analogue Na3Co(CO3)2Cl, which exhibits all-in-all-out magnetic order below 1.5 K (Z. Fu et al., Phys. Rev. B 87, 214406 (2013)). On the other hand, no magnetic Bragg peak indicating a magnetic order was detected down to 0.05 K in Na3Mn(CO3)2Cl. A high degeneracy near the ground state is suggested by a magnetic entropy estimated from heat capacity experiments and enhancement of diffuse scattering from neutron diffraction experiments. © 2021 American Physical Society