Magnetic excitations in a rare earth Kitaev material

Among the intense research on quantum spin liquid states, the Kitaev model has attracted great attention. Compounds consist of honeycomb layers with strong spin-orbit coupling, such as RuCl3, are proposed to hold prominent Kitaev interactions. Since d orbital is not the necessary condition for Kitaev model, we further synthesized the rare earth honeycomb lattice compound YbCl3, which crystallizes in the same structure as the widely studied RuCl3. From the magnetic susceptibility and specific heat measurement, one may expect YbCl3 to be closer to a pure Kitaev spin liquid state. For this experiment, we proposed to use Horace scans the map out the inelastic response across the Brillouin zone at 70mK, followed by the studying on the temperature evolution of the magnetic signals. LET is ideal for the proposed experiment due to its PSD configuration and high flux at interested energy range.