Heat transport study of the spin liquid candidate 1T-TaS2

Abstract

We present the ultra-low-temperature thermal conductivity measurements on single crystals of the prototypical charge-density-wave material 1$T$-TaS$_2$, which was recently argued to be a candidate for quantum spin liquid. Our experiments show that the residual linear term of thermal conductivity at zero field is essentially zero, within the experimental accuracy. Furthermore, the thermal conductivity is found to be insensitive to the magnetic field up to 9 T. These results clearly demonstrate the absence of itinerant magnetic excitations with fermionic statistics in bulk 1$T$-TaS$_2$ and, thus, put a strong constraint on the theories of the ground state of this material.