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Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 027201 (2007) [4 pages]

Linear Temperature Dependence of the Magnetic Heat Conductivity in CaCu2O3

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C. Hess1,*, H. ElHaes2, A. Waske1, B. Büchner1, C. Sekar1, G. Krabbes1, F. Heidrich-Meisner3, and W. Brenig4
1Leibniz-Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, IFW-Dresden, 01171 Dresden, Germany
22. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH-Aachen, 52056 Aachen, Germany and Physics Department, Faculty of Women, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
3Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37831, USA and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA
4Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany

Received 5 October 2006; published 10 January 2007

We present experimental results for the thermal conductivity κ of the pseudo-two-leg ladder material CaCu2O3. The strong buckling of the ladder rungs renders this material a good approximation to a S=1/2 Heisenberg chain. Despite a strong suppression of the thermal conductivity of this material in all crystal directions due to inherent disorder, we find a dominant magnetic contribution κmag along the chain direction. κmag is linear in temperature, resembling the low-temperature limit of the thermal Drude weight Dth of the S=1/2 Heisenberg chain. The comparison of κmag and Dth yields a magnetic mean-free path of lmag≈22±5  Å, in good agreement with magnetic measurements.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.027201
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.027201
PACS:
75.40.Gb, 66.70.+f, 68.65.−k, 75.10.Pq

*Electronic address: c.hess@ifw-dresden.de

 
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