A research article by Dr Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Assistant Professor of Physics, SIAS titled Magnetic and electronic structure studies on S= 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic alternating spin chain system KCuGa(PO4)2 has been published in Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. The work highlights the low-dimensional magnetic behaviour in a novel phosphorus based cuprate system KCuGa(PO4)2. In this work the team reported the magnetic susceptibility of this S=1/2 system down to 2 K and observed a broad maximum around 12 K indicating the short-range magnetic behaviour, followed by an exponential decay, indicating the existence of a spin gap in the magnetic ground state. The magnetic susceptibility data are modeled with the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic alternating spin chain, which gives Jmin ≈ −6.47 K, Jmax ≈ −16.18 K alternation parameter (𝛼) = 𝐽min∕𝐽max ≈ 0.40, and a spin gap (𝛥)= 12 K. Magnetic heat capacity measurements further confirm the value of 𝛥 as 12 K. They have also observed field induced magnetic behavior in this system.The findings suggest that KCuGa(PO4)2 serves as an experimental model for investigating quantum phase transitions in dimerized spin systems.
