Crystal electric field study of a Nd3+ based frustrated hyperkagome antiferromagnet Nd3Li3W2O12(NLWO)

We propose to investigate the crystal field level scheme in the Nd3+-based frustrated hyperkagome lattice system Nd3Li3W2O12(NLWO). Since Nd3+ (J = 9/2) is a Kramers ion, it is expected to exhibit five crystal field doublets. We have synthesized NLWO and measured its low-temperature thermodynamic properties. Low-temperature magnetization and specific heat measurements indicate that the ground state can be characterized by the low-lying Kramers doublet of the Nd3+ ion with an effective spin-1/2 (Jeff = 1/2) state. The exact nature of the ground state in this compound is not completely understood. To address this, we aim to elucidate the crystal field level scheme of NLWO using inelastic neutron scattering (INS) experiments in zero-field and at several temperatures in the MARI spectrometer. The results will facilitate detailed modeling of the temperature- and magnetic-field-dependent magnetization and heat capacity data, and will allow us to evaluate the exchange and anisotropy energy scales of this system.