The crystal structure of Ba4NbRu3O12 is based on triangular planes of elongated Ru3O12 trimers oriented perpendicular to the plane. We report that it is semiconducting, that its Weiss temperature and effective magnetic moment are -155 K and 2.59 μB/f.u. respectively, and that magnetic susceptibility and specific heat data indicate that it exhibits magnetic ordering near 4 K. The presence of a high density of low energy states is evidenced by a substantial Sommerfeld-like Tlinear term ( = 31(2) mJ/mole-K 2 ) in the specific heat. Electronic structure calculations reveal that the electronic states at the Fermi Energy reside on the Ru3O12 trimers and that the calculated density of electronic states is high and continuous around the Fermi Energy -in other words density functional theory calculates the material to be a metal. Our results imply that Ba4NbRu3O12 is a geometrically frustrated trimer-based Mott insulator.

Recently, Co-based honeycomb magnets have been proposed as promising candidate materials to host the Kitaev spin liquid (KSL) state. One of the front-runners is BaCo 2 (AsO 4 ) 2 (BCAO), where it was suggested that the exchange processes between Co 2+ ions via the surrounding edge-sharing oxygen octahedra could give rise to bond-dependent Kitaev interactions. In this work, we present and analyze a comprehensive inelastic neutron scattering (INS) study of BCAO with fields in the honeycomb plane. Combining the constraints from the magnon excitations in the high-field polarized state and the inelastic spin structure factor measured in zero magnetic field, we examine two leading theoretical models: the Kitaev-type JK Γ Γ ′ model and the XXZ - J 1 - J 3 model. We show that the existing experimental data can be consistently accounted for by the XXZ - J 1 - J 3 model but not by the JK Γ Γ ′ model, and we discuss the implications of these results for the realization of a spin liquid phase in BCAO and more generally for the realization of the Kitaev model in cobaltates.

We present a thorough experimental study of the three-dimensional hyperhoneycomb Kitaev magnet β-Li2IrO3, using a combination of inelastic neutron scattering (INS), time-domain THz spectroscopy, and heat capacity measurements. The main results include a massive low-temperature reorganization of the INS spectral weight that evolves into a broad peak centered around 12 meV, and a distinctive peak in the THz data at 2.8(1) meV. A detailed comparison to powder-averaged spin-wave theory calculations reveals that the positions of these two features are controlled by the anisotropic Γ coupling and the Heisenberg exchange J, respectively. The refined microscopic spin model places β-Li2IrO3 in close proximity to the Kitaev spin liquid phase.