Masaki Oshikawa coauthored a theory interpreting field-induced Néel order in thallium copper chloride as Bose-Einstein condensation of dilute magnons. An applied magnetic field changes the energy cost of these magnetic excitations, allowing their population to become large enough for collective ordering. The 2000 work compared a dilute-boson mean-field theory with the measured temperature dependence of magnetization. This provides a connection between an insulating magnet and the collective quantum mechanics of a gas of bosons, without requiring the magnetic material to become a fluid.[ref]
Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dilute Magnons in TlCuCl3 by Tetsuro Nikuni and others. Physical Review Letters 84, 5868–5871, abstract and dilute-boson interpretation
Portrait of Masaki Oshikawa
. External portrait hosted by Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo. Source. New to topics? Read the docs here!