Torque anomalies at magnetization plateaux in quantum magnets with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions

Institute of Theoretical Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Corresponding author: salvatore.manmana@epfl.ch

Received: 29 October 2008
Accepted: 5 January 2009

Abstract

We investigate the effect of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interactions on torque measurements of quantum magnets with magnetization plateaux in the context of a frustrated spin-1/2 ladder. Using extensive DMRG simulations, we show that the DM contribution to the torque is peaked at the critical fields, and that the total torque is non-monotonous if the DM interaction is large enough compared to the g-tensor anisotropy. More remarkably, if the DM vectors point in a principal direction of the g-tensor, torque measurements close to this direction will show well-defined peaks even for small DM interaction, leading to a very sensitive way to detect the critical fields. We propose to test this effect in the two-dimensional plateau system SrCu₂(BO₃)₂.