Gapless Quantum Spin Liquid in the Triangular System Sr 3 CuSb 2 O 9

We report gapless quantum spin liquid behavior in the layered triangular ${\mathrm{Sr}}_{3}{\mathrm{CuSb}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{9}$ system. X-ray diffraction shows superlattice reflections associated with atomic site ordering into triangular Cu planes well separated by Sb planes. Muon spin relaxation measurements show that the $S=\frac{1}{2}$ moments at the magnetically active Cu sites remain dynamic down to 65 mK in spite of a large antiferromagnetic exchange scale evidenced by a large Curie-Weiss temperature ${\ensuremath{\theta}}_{\mathrm{CW}}\ensuremath{\simeq}\ensuremath{-}143\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{K}$ as extracted from the bulk susceptibility. Specific heat measurements also show no sign of long-range order down to 0.35 K. The magnetic specific heat (${C}_{m}$) below 5 K reveals a ${C}_{m}=\ensuremath{\gamma}T+\ensuremath{\alpha}{T}^{2}$ behavior. The significant ${T}^{2}$ contribution to the magnetic specific heat invites a phenomenology in terms of the so-called Dirac spinon excitations with a linear dispersion. From the low-$T$ specific heat data, we estimate the dominant exchange scale to be $\ensuremath{\sim}36\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{K}$ using a Dirac spin liquid ansatz which is not far from the values inferred from microscopic density functional theory calculations ($\ensuremath{\sim}45\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{K}$) as well as high-temperature susceptibility analysis ($\ensuremath{\sim}70\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{K}$). The linear specific heat coefficient is about $18\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{mJ}/\mathrm{mol}\text{ }{\mathrm{K}}^{2}$ which is somewhat larger than for typical Fermi liquids.