Possible Néel orderings of the Kagomé antiferromagnet

Possible Néel orderings of antiferromagnetically coupled spins on a kagomé lattice are studied using linear-spin-wave theory and high-temperature expansions. Spin-wave analysis, applied to q=0 (three spins per magnetic unit cell) and to √3 × √3 (nine spins per cell) Néel orderings yield identical excitation spectra with twofold-degenerate linear modes and a dispersionless zero-energy mode. This dispersionless mode is equivalent to an excitation localized to an arbitrary hexagon of nearest-neighbor spins. Second- (J2) and third- (J3) neighbor interactions are shown to stabilize the q=0 state for J2>J3 and the √3 × √3 state for J21, the maximum susceptibility is found for a √3 × √3 excitation. Similar results are found for the three-dimensional pyrochlore lattice. The high-temperature expansion is used to interpret experimental data for the uniform susceptibility and powder-neutron-diffraction spectrum for the kagomé-lattice system SrCr8-xGa4+xO19.