Correlations and Thermal Transport in α-RuCl3 at Finite Temperature

α-RuCl₃ has emerged as a candidate material for realising strongly anisotropic and frustrated interactions beyond the celebrated Kitaev model. Despite falling into an antiferromagnetically ordered state at low temperature, the combination of inelastic neutron scattering (INS) [1], electron spin resonance (ESR) [2] and Raman [3] measurements on α-RuCl₃ have revealed persistent magnetic correlations up to high temperatures. Such experiments also show a strong discrepancy between the low-energy response for the magnetically ordered phase (T < T_N) and paramagnetic phase (T > T_N). Here we discuss this phenomenology with reference to recent ab-initio derived magnetic models including terms beyond the Kitaev interaction. In particular, we will address [4]: (i) The evolution of the dynamical response (INS, ESR, Raman), (ii) the influence of local excitations on the static susceptibility, and (iii) the magnetic thermal transport in different temperature regimes.
[1] Do et. al, Nat. Phys. 13, 1079 (2017).
[2] Wang et. al, arXiv:1706.06157 (2017).
[3] Sandilands et. al, PRL 114, 147201 (2015).
[4] Riedl et. al, in preparation.