Besides being an ancient pigment, BaCuSi2O6 is a quasi-2D magnetic insulator with a gapped spin dimer ground state. The application of strong magnetic fields closes this gap, creating a gas of bosonic spin triplet excitations. The topology of the spin lattice makes BaCuSi2O6 an ideal candidate for studying the Bose-Einstein condensation of triplet excitations as a function of the external magnetic field, which acts as a chemical potential. In agreement with quantum Monte Carlo numerical simulations, we observe a distinct lambda anomaly in the specific heat together with a maximum in the magnetic susceptibility upon cooling down to liquid helium temperatures.

Bismuth ferrite is a magnetoelectric material, which simultaneously has polarization and spin orders. We have used electron spin resonance ͑ESR͒ as a local probe of the magnetic order in the magnetic-field range of 0-25 T, in the frequency domain of 115-360 GHz, and at a temperature of 4.2 K. The data reveal significant changes in the ESR spectra with increasing field, which have been analyzed by taking into account the magnetic anisotropy of the crystal and a magnetoelectric Dzyaloshinsky-Moria-like interaction. The results demonstrate an induced phase transition from an incommensurately cycloidal modulated state to one with homogeneous spin order.

NiCl2-4SC(NH2)2 (DTN) is a quantum S = 1 chain system with strong easy-pane anisotropy and a new candidate for the Bose-Einstein condensation of the spin degrees of freedom. ESR studies of magnetic excitations in DTN in fields up to 25 T are presented. Based on analysis of the single-magnon excitation mode in the high-field spin-polarized phase and previous experimental results [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 077204 (2006)], a revised set of spin-Hamiltonian parameters is obtained. Our results yield D = 8.9 K, Jc = 2.2 K, and J a,b = 0.18 K for the anisotropy, intrachain, and interchain exchange interactions, respectively. These values are used to calculate the antiferromagnetic phase boundary, magnetization and the frequency-field dependence of two-magnon bound-state excitations predicted by theory and observed in DTN for the first time. Excellent quantitative agreement with experimental data is obtained. PACS numbers: 75.40.Gb, 75.10.Jm Antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum spin-1 chains have been the subject of intensive theoretical and experimental studies, fostered especially by the Haldane conjecture [1]. Due to quantum fluctuations, an isotropic spin-1 chain has a spin-singlet ground state separated from the first excited state by a gap ∆ ∼ 0.41J [2], where J is the exchange interaction. As shown by Golinelli et al. [3], the presence of a strong easy-plane anisotropy D can significantly modify the excitation spectrum, so that the gap size is not determined by the strength of the AFM quantum fluctuations exclusively, but depends on the dimensionless parameter ρ = D/J. The Haldane phase is predicted to survive up to ρ c = 0.93 [4], where the system undergoes a quantum phase transition. For ρ > ρ c the gap reopens, but its origin is dominated by the anisotropy D, and the system is in the so-called large-D regime. While the underlying physics of Haldane chains is fairly well understood, relatively little is known about the magnetic properties (and particularly the elementary excitation spectrum) of nonHaldane S = 1 AFM chains in the large-D phase. Intense theoretical work and numerous predictions [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] make the experimental investigation of large-D spin-1 chains a topical problem in low-dimensional magnetism.Recently, weakly-coupled spin-1 chains have attracted renewed interest due to their possible relevance to the fieldinduced Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of magnons. When the field H, applied perpendicular to the easy plane, exceeds a critical value H c1 (defined at T = 0), the gap closes and the system undergoes a transition into an XY -like AFM phase with a finite magnetization and AFM magnon excitations. If the spin Hamiltonian has axial symmetry with respect to the applied field, the AFM ordering can be described as BEC of magnons by mapping the spin-1 system into a gas of semi-hard-core bosons [11]. The applied field plays the role of a chemical potential, changing the boson population. In accordance with mean-field BEC theory [12,13,14], the phasediagram boundary for a three-dimensional system sh...

The magnetic excitation spectrum of copper pyrimidine dinitrate, a material containing S = 1 / 2 antiferromagnetic chains with alternating g tensor and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and exhibiting a field-induced spin gap, is probed using submillimeter wave electron spin resonance spectroscopy. Ten excitation modes are resolved in the low-temperature spectrum, and their frequency-field diagram is systematically studied in magnetic fields up to 25 T. The experimental data are sufficiently detailed to make a very accurate comparison with predictions based on the quantum sine-Gordon field theory. Signatures of three breather branches and a soliton, as well as those of several multiparticle excitation modes, are identified.