Condensed Matter Seminar "How to Fall Off a Plateau in a Shastry-Sutherland Lattice"

Magnetization plateaus are related to topological quantization that entwines spin and spatial degrees of freedom leading to a gap in the energy spectrum. I will discuss an example of a plateau in a Shastry-Sutherland system TmB4, where we used high-precision specific heat and magnetization to characterize the stability of the so-called 1/8th phase. Related systems and prospects for topological quantum matter will be discussed.