Field Induced Spin Structure of Ising Shastry Sutherland Plateaus in Holmium Tetraboride

Rare earth tetraborides are a class of Shastry-Sutherland magnets with frustration-generated magnetization plateaus in the Ising limit, but the microscopic origin of these plateaus is not fully understood. To elucidate these origins, we conduct neutron white beam Laue experiments on holmium tetraboride (HoTe4) and observe microscopic ordering and new in-plane incommensurate orders not previously reported besides the conventional 1/3 plateau appearing from commensurate out-of-plane order. Determining the nature of these phases enables us to deduce the Hamiltonian and the exact frustration mechanisms that might lead to the rich magnetic phase diagram. We hypothesize the microscopic origins of these observations and confirm this hypothesis using classical computations. Especially, we discuss opportunities to interpret these experimental results using unconventional computing paradigms such as quantum and digital annealing.