Semiclassical theory for liquid-like behaviour of the frustrated magnet $\mathrm{Ca}_{10}\mathrm{Cr}_{7}\mathrm{O}_{28}$

Abstract

We identify the low energy effective Hamiltonian that is expected to describe the low temperature properties of the frustrated magnet $\mathrm{Ca}_{10}\mathrm{Cr}_{7}\mathrm{O}_{28}$. Motivated by the fact that this effective Hamiltonian has $S=3/2$ effective moments as its degrees of freedom, we use semiclassical spinwave theory to study the $T=0$ physics of this effective model and argue that singular spinwave fluctuations destabilize the spiral order favoured by the exchange couplings of this effective Hamiltonian. We also use a combination of classical Monte-Carlo simulations and molecular dynamics, as well as analytical approximations, to study the physics at low, nonzero temperatures. The results of these nonzero temperature calculations capture the liquid-like structure factors observed in the temperature range accessed by recent experiments. Additionally, at still lower temperatures, they predict that a transition to nematic order in the bond energies reflects itself in the spin channel in the form of a crossover to a regime with large but finite correlation length for spiral spin correlations and a corresponding slowing down of spin dynamics.