Characteristics of the intermediate-field ordered phase of alpha- RuCl3 revealed by magnetic diffraction*

There has been great interest in alpha-RuCl3 as a material that manifests Kitaev terms in the spin Hamiltonian and a possible field-induced quantum spin liquid (QSL) phase by 8 T [1]. Bulk Measurements show that in the in-plane magnetic field causes a transition to an intermediate ordered phase around 6 Tesla [1, 2], preceding the total suppression of magnetic order around 7.3 T. Here we use time-of-flight neutron diffraction to elucidate the nature of intermediate phase and its magnetic order. Our results provide new insights into the dimensionality of the magnetic order and the effective spin-Hamiltonian of the material.
[1] A. Banerjee, P. Kelley, C. Balz et al., npj-Quantum Materials 3, 8 (2018).
[2] P. Kelley, L. Janssen, E. Andrade, S. Rachel, J.-Q. Yan, C. Balz, D. Mandrus, S. Nagler, M. Vojta, arxiv:1807.06192 (2018).