Magnetism close to the Majumdar-Ghosh point in the natural mineral szenicsite

There is huge interest in studying the intrinsic magnetism of minerals and how the physical properties of similar structures differ from each other. We week to understand the magnetism within szenicsite, a Cu based compound where the crystal structure was solved only in 1998. What is interesting is that it is made up of triple chains of Cu-O ions that run down the c-axis and it is believed that the middle chain behaves like a Heisenberg magnet, but the chains on the outside form dimers. Therefore there is some extremely interesting physics at play. To date, the evidence for this come from simulations combined with magnetic susceptibility and heat capacity measurements however we believe that µSR can provide more conclusive information.