Honeycomb rare-earth magnets with anisotropic exchange interactions

Understand

We study the rare-earth magnets on a honeycomb lattice, and are particularly interested in the experimental consequences of the highly anisotropic spin interaction due to the spin-orbit entanglement.

• We perform a high-temperature series expansion using a generic nearest-neighbor Hamiltonian with anisotropic interactions, and obtain the heat capacity, the parallel and perpendicular spin susceptibilities, and the magnetic torque coefficients.
• We further examine the electron spin resonance linewidth as an important signature of the anisotropic spin interactions.
• Due to the small interaction energy scale of the rare-earth moments, it is experimentally feasible to realize the strong-field regime.