Electronic transport on the Shastry-Sutherland lattice in Ising-type rare-earth tetraborides

Abstract

In the presence of a magnetic field frustrated spin systems may exhibit plateaus at fractional values of saturation magnetization. Such plateau states are stabilized by classical and quantum mechanisms including order by disorder, triplon crystallization, and various competing order effects. In the case of electrically conducting systems, free electrons represent an incisive probe for the plateau states. Here we study the electrical transport of Ising-type rare-earth tetraborides RB_{4} (R=Er, Tm), a metallic Shastry-Sutherland lattice showing magnetization plateaus. We find that the longitudinal and transverse resistivities reflect scattering with both the static and the dynamic plateau structure. We model these results consistently with the expected strong uniaxial anisotropy on a quantitative level, providing a framework for the study of plateau states in metallic frustrated systems.