Magnetoelastic coupling in the spin-dimer system TlCuCl3.

Based on high-resolution measurements of the thermal expansion and the magnetostriction we analyze the magnetoelastic coupling of TlCuCl3. We find that the phase boundary between the low-field spin liquid phase and the magnetic-field-induced Néel phase is extremely sensitive to pressure and would change by about +/-185%/GPa depending on the direction of uniaxial pressure. This drastic effect can unambiguously be traced back to the pressure dependencies of the intradimer coupling, whereas changes of the interdimer couplings under pressure play a minor role. The observed strong decrease of the interdimer coupling, when Tl is substituted by K, is therefore not a consequence of chemical pressure.