Probing spin correlations with phonons in the strongly frustrated magnet ZnCr2O4
Abstract
The spin-lattice coupling plays an important role in strongly frustrated magnets. In ZnCr2O4, an excellent realization of the Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the ``pyrochlore'' network, a lattice distortion relieves the geometrical frustration through a spin-Peierls-like phase transition at Tc = 12.5 K. Conversely, spin correlations strongly influence the elastic properties of a frustrated magnet. By using infrared spectroscopy and published data on magnetic specific heat, we demonstrate that the frequency of an optical phonon triplet in ZnCr2O4 tracks the nearest-neighbor spin correlations above Tc. The splitting of the phonon triplet below Tc provides a way to measure of the spin-Peierls order parameter.
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