ESR study of the spin ladder with uniform Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction

Abstract

©2015 American Physical Society. Evolution of the ESR absorption in a strong-leg spin ladder magnet (C7H10N)2CuBr4 (abbreviated as DIMPY) is studied from 300 K to 400 mK. Temperature dependence of the ESR relaxation follows a staircase of crossovers between different relaxation regimes. We argue that the main mechanism of ESR line broadening in DIMPY is uniform Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (|D|=0.31 K) with an effective longitudinal component along an exchange bond of Cu ions within the legs resulting from the low crystal symmetry of DIMPY and nontrivial orbital ordering. The same Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction along with other weaker anisotropic spin-spin interactions results in the lifting of the triplet excitation degeneracy, revealed through the weak splitting of the ESR absorption at low temperatures.