Impurity effects in coupled-ladder BiCu(2)PO(6) studied by NMR and quantum Monte Carlo simulations

Abstract

We present a (31)P NMR study of the coupled spin 1/2 ladder compound BiCu(2)PO(6). In the pure material, intrinsic susceptibility, and dynamics show a spin gap of about Delta approximate to 35-40 K. Substitution of nonmagnetic Zn or magnetic Ni impurity at Cu site induces a staggered magnetization which results in a broadening of the 31P NMR line while susceptibility far from the defects is unaffected. The effect of Ni on the NMR line broadening is twice that of Zn, which is consistent with quantum Monte Carlo calculations assuming that Ni couples ferromagnetically to its adjacent Cu. The induced moment follows a 1/T temperature dependence due to the Curie-type development of the moment amplitude while its extension saturates and does not depend on impurity content or nature. This allow us to verify the generically expected scenario for impurity doping and to extend it to magnetic impurity case: in an antiferromagnetically correlated low-dimensional spin system with antiferromagnetic correlations, any type of impurity induces a staggered moment at low temperature, whose extension is not linked to the impurity nature but to the intrinsic physics at play in the undoped pure system, from one-dimensional to two-dimensional systems.