muSR study on highly frustrated triangular lattice compound Ba3YbRu2O9

The Ba3BRu2O9 (B=Transition-metal or Rare-earth) compounds have gained a lot of interest in recent years owing to the interesting observations of quantum spin liquid, orbital ordering, and complex magnetic ordering in these compounds. Here we propose to study one member of this family, Ba3YbRu2O9, a highly frustrated compound with a frustration index of ~50, by performing ZF- and LF-muSR experiments at the EMU spectrometer. The dc magnetization study on the compound reveals a magnetic transition at ~4.3 K. Interestingly, the specific heat data infers a broad anomaly centered at ~7.5 K suggesting short-range correlation in the paramagnetic state, along with a sharp anomaly at ~ 4.3 K. The deviation of the paramagnetic susceptibility from the Curie-Weiss behavior below ~100 K, a temperature much higher than the transition temperature of TN~4.3 K, also suggests the presence of short-range magnetic correlations in the paramagnetic state of the compound. The proposed ZF-muSR experiments will shed light on the short-range magnetic correlations in the compound, while LF-muSR scans will be helpful to get an estimate of the internal magnetic field to decouple the muon spins. Longitudinal field (LF) scans will help in understanding the role of any inhomogeneities/disorder in muon relaxation, if present, as reported for other Ba3YRu2O9 and Ba3InRu2O9 isostructural compounds.