Giant suppression of phononic heat transport in a quantum magnet BiCu₂PO₆

Thermal transport of quantum magnets has elucidated the nature of low energy elementary excitations and complex interplay between those excited states via strong scattering of thermal carriers. BiCu₂PO₆ is a unique frustrated spin-ladder compound exhibiting highly anisotropic spin excitations that contain both itinerant and localized dispersion characters along the b- and a-axes respectively. Here, we investigate thermal conductivity κ of BiCu₂PO₆ under high magnetic fields (H) of up to 30 tesla. A dip-feature in κ, located at ~15 K at zero-H along all crystallographic directions, moves gradually toward lower temperature (T) with increasing H, thus resulting in giant suppression by a factor of ~30 near the critical magnetic field of H_c ≅ 23.5 tesla. The giant H- and T-dependent suppression of κ can be explained by the combined result of resonant scattering of phononic heat carriers with magnetic energy levels and increased phonon scattering due to enhanced spin fluctuation at H_c, unequivocally revealing the existence of strong spin-phonon coupling. Moreover, we find an experimental indication that the remaining magnetic heat transport along the b-axis becomes almost gapless at the magnetic quantum critical point realized at H_c.