Highly anisotropic exchange interactions of jeff=12 iridium moments on the fcc lattice in La2BIrO6 (B=Mg,Zn)

A special type of anisotropic spin exchange called the ``Kitaev interaction'' provides rare exactly-soluble models of gapless quantum spin liquids in 2d and 3d. The main goals of this work were to identify other lattice geometries that support the elusive Kitaev interactions and understand the magnetic properties of such materials. By performing inelastic neutron scattering on La${}_{2}$MgIrO${}_{6}$ and La${}_{2}$ZnIrO${}_{6}$, the authors find that these magnets, which possess long-range antiferromagnetic order, yield clear signatures of gapped and nearly-dispersionless magnon excitations. They also show that spin-wave models with a dominant Kitaev interaction can naturally account for the magnetic ordering pattern as well as the inelastic neutron scattering data.