Designing, Synthesizing and Characterizing Rare-Earth Based Frustrated Quantum Magnets

Frustrated quantum magnets are systems for which the exchange interactions governing the interacting spins cannot be simultaneously satisfied, leading to a highly degenerate ground state and new states of matter such as Quantum Spin Liquids. In geometrically frustrated systems, competition between neighboring spin interactions arises from the geometry of the lattice. Recently Rare-Earth base geometrically frustrated systems have attracted much attention due to the strong spin-orbit coupling and anisotropy of the exchange interactions. In this talk, I will discuss our recent progress in designing, synthesizing and characterizing Rare-Earth based 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional frustrated magnets. I will present our magnetic and thermal measurements as well as our recent neutron scattering results.