Crystalline electric field excitations in the quantum spin liquid candidate NaYbSe2

By employing inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and Raman scattering (RS) experiments, we comprehensively investigate crystalline electric field (CEF) excitations in NaYbSe2, a new quantum spin liquid candidate that belongs to a large family of triangular-lattice rare-earth chalcogenides with a high-symmetry structure and negligible structural, spin, and charge disordering effects. We can identify CEF excitations at 15.8, 24.3, and 30.5 meV at 5 K. The selected cuts of the INS spectra are well reproduced with a large anisotropy of g(ab) = 2.9 and g(c) = 1. The CEF excitations are further confirmed by our calculations based on the point charge model. Interestingly, NaYbSe2 exhibits an unusual shift of CEF levels to higher energies with increasing temperatures. Further, the Raman mode close to the first CEF excitation shows an anomalously large softening with decreasing temperatures. The absence of these anomalies in the nonmagnetic isostructural material NaLuSe2 allows us to argue that NaYbSe2 incorporates an unusually strong CEF-phonon resonancelike coupling not reported in any of the triangular-lattice rare-earth chalcogenides. The determination of the CEF excitations suggests the validity of the picture of an effective spin 1/2 at low temperatures.

Automated summary

Through experiments and calculations, we investigated the crystalline electric field excitations in NaYbSe2 and found that with increasing temperatures, the CEF levels shift to higher energies, which is in contrast to the nonmagnetic NaLuSe2 where this phenomenon was not observed.