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Electronic Properties of α'-NaV_2O_5

We studied electronic excitations in NaV2O5 by Raman. Three main topics are discussed. The first is related to a broad continuum of excitations found in the 200-1500 cm-1 range and peaked around 680 cm-1. The resonant Raman profile of this excitation, the polarization selection rules and the presence of its overtone in resonance conditions allowed us to conclude that the origin of this feature is magnetic. We proposed that it arises as a result of light coupling to multi-spinon Raman excitations. Within this scenario we also argued for a scenario explaining the puzzling temperature dependence of the magnetic continuum in terms of an increasing role of next nearest neighbor frustration and in the context of a strongly fluctuating low temperature phase. The second topic is related to the observation of a folded S = 1 magnetic mode which displayed very clear selection rules as a function of the magnetic field orientation. We proposed that the coupling of the photon field to this excitation takes place via the antisymmetric, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM), interaction which, in a simple dimer model, can also explain the observed selection rules: no splitting or shifts for magnetic fields parallel to the DM vector and the observation of two (upward and downward) dispersing branches for fields perpendicular to the DM vector. Thirdly, we discuss the nature of several new resonances seen below T_c and focus on the possibilities that they are either folded phonons or singlet bound states of two triplet excitations. In particular we emphasized the existence of two modes at 66 and 105 cm-1, the first one being degenerate with one of the spin gap modes.