Experimental Evidence for the Spiral Spin Liquid in LiYbO₂

Spiral spin liquids are an exotic class of correlated paramagnets with an enigmatic magnetic ground state composed of a degenerate manifold of fluctuating spin spirals. Experimental realizations of the spiral spin liquid are scarce, mainly due to the prominence of structural distortions in candidate materials that can trigger order-by-disorder transitions to more conventionally ordered magnetic ground states. Expanding the pool of candidate materials that may host a spiral spin liquid is therefore crucial to realizing this novel magnetic ground state and understanding its robustness against perturbations that arise in real materials. Here, we show that the material LiYbO₂ is the first experimental realization of a spiral spin liquid predicted to emerge from the J₁−J₂ Heisenberg model on an elongated diamond lattice. Through a complementary combination of high-resolution and diffuse neutron magnetic scattering studies on a polycrystalline sample, we demonstrate that LiYbO₂ fulfills the requirements for the experimental realization of the spiral spin liquid and reconstruct single-crystal diffuse neutron magnetic scattering maps that reveal continuous spiral spin contours—a characteristic experimental hallmark of this exotic magnetic phase.