Heavy fermion spin liquid in herbertsmithite

We analyze recent heat capacity measurements in herbertsmithite ZnCu3(OH)6Cl2 single crystal samples subjected to strong magnetic fields. We show that the temperature dependence of specific heat Cmag formed by quantum spin liquid at different magnetic fields B resembles the electronic heat capacity Cel of the HF metal YbRh2Si2. We demonstrate that the spinon effective mass Mmag⁎∝Cmag/T exhibits a scaling behavior like that of Cel/T. We also show that the recent measurements of Cmag are compatible with those obtained on powder samples. These observations allow us to conclude that ZnCu3(OH)6Cl2 holds a stable strongly correlated quantum spin liquid, and a possible gap in the spectra of spinon excitations is absent even under the application of very high magnetic fields of 18 T.