Orbital Order Effect of Two-Dimensional Spin Gap System for CaV₄O₉

Abstract

Effects of possible orbital order in magnetic properties of two-dimensional spin gap system for CaV₄O₉ are investigated theoretically. After analyzing experimental data, we show that single orbital models assumed in the literature are insufficient to reproduce the data. To understand the origin of the discrepancy, we assume that in d¹ state of V, d_xz and d_yz orbitals have substantial contributions in the lowest-energy atomic level which leads to a double-degeneracy. We study possible configurations of the orbital order. By exact diagonalization and perturbation expansion, we calculate the susceptibility, wavenumber dependence of low-lying excitations and equal-time spin-spin correlations which is related to integrated intensity of the neutron inelastic scattering. These quantities sensitively depend on the configuration of the orbital order. The calculated results for some configurations of the orbital order reproduce many experimental results much better than the previous single-orbital models. However some discrepancy still remains to completely reproduce all of the reported experimental results. To understand the origin of these discrepancies, we point out the possible importance of the partially occupied d_xy orbital in addition to orbital order of partially filled d_xz and d_yz orbitals.