Published in

Nature Research, npj Quantum Materials, 1(8), 2023

DOI: 10.1038/s41535-023-00572-9

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Collective magnetic Higgs excitation in a pyrochlore ruthenate

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

AbstractThe emergence of scalar Higgs-type amplitude modes in systems where symmetry is spontaneously broken has been a highly successful, paradigmatic description of phase transitions, with implications ranging from high-energy particle physics to low-energy condensed matter systems. Here, we uncover two successive high temperature phase transitions in the pyrochlore magnet Nd2Ru2O7 at TN = 147 K and T* = 97 K, that lead to giant phonon instabilities and culminate in the emergence of a highly coherent excitation. This coherent excitation, distinct from other phonons and from conventional magnetic modes, stabilizes at a low energy of 3 meV. We assign it to a collective Higgs-type amplitude mode, that involves bond energy modulations of the Ru4 tetrahedra. Its striking two-fold symmetry, incompatible with the underlying crystal structure, highlights the possibility of multiple entangled broken symmetries.