We propose to study identified materials where the magnetic rare-earth ion form a triangular lattice and may be characterized by a dipole-octupole ground state doublet. Due to spin-orbit entanglement and the special form of its wave function, the dipole-octupole doublet has rather peculiar properties under lattice symmetry operations. Hidden multipolar orders or quantum spin liquids may emerge from the dipolar and octupolar interactions in such materials. Here we propose to investigate experimentally a few compounds for which neutron scattering experiments will be used in order to determine the crystal-electric field and search for signatures of a correlated ground state at very low temperatures. The neutron study will be complemented by macroscopic measurements at low temperature such as magnetization and heat capacity.
CNM laboratory: Laboratory for Neutron Scattering and Imaging LNS
