Analysis of the low temperature spin correlations in the hexagonal Ising anti-ferromagnet NdCl3

Understanding the phases and properties of materials which do not conform to the paradigms derived from notions of canonical long-range order, are at the frontier of materials physics. Indeed, understanding short range spin correlations and how they reflect entanglement and other collective quantum phenomena is required to harness such physics for next generation technologies and advancing understanding of the fundamental properties of matter. A key ingredient for finding such behavior is novel three-dimensional spin networks which can generate strong geometric frustration. Furthermore, it is now recognized that the novel physics of frustrated spin networks is enhanced by the presence of anisotropic spin-spin interactions originating with strong spin-orbit coupling, thus rare-earth compounds are a particularly compelling place to look for new examples of frustrated materials. With these criteria in mind, we recently investigated the magnetic properties of the hexagonal Ising anti-ferromagnet NdCl3 and we suspect that this system may possess a novel short range or liquid like phase that surprisingly is hosted by lattices that appears to be highly 3-dimensional. Here we propose to study the spin correlations of NdCl3 at low temperatures, with elastic neutron scattering measurements.