No Arabic abstract
The itinerant quasi-ferromagnetic metal MnSi has been studied by detailed thermal expansion measurements under pressures and magnetic fields. A sudden decrease of the volume at the critical pressure Pc ~1.6 GPa has been observed and is in good agreement with the pressure variation of the volume fraction of the spiral magnetic ordering. This confirms that the magnetic order disappears by a first order phase transition. The energy change estimated by the volume discontinuity on crossing Pc is of similar order as the Zeeman energy of the transition from the spiral ground state to a polarized paramagnetic one under magnetic field. In contrast to the strong pressure dependence of the transition temperature, the characteristic fields are weakly pressure dependent, indicating that the strength of the ferromagnetic and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions do not change drastically around Pc. The evaluated results of the thermal expansion coefficient and the magnetostriction are analyzed thermodynamically. The Sommerfeld coefficient of the linear temperature term of the specific heat is enhanced just below Pc. The magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams in the ordered and paramagnetic phases are also compared. Comparison is made with other heavy fermion compounds with first order phase transition at 0 K.
We report comprehensive small angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements complemented by ac susceptibility data of the helical order, conical phase and skyrmion lattice phase (SLP) in MnSi under uniaxial pressures. For all crystallographic orientations uniaxial pressure favours the phase for which a spatial modulation of the magnetization is closest to the pressure axis. Uniaxial pressures as low as 1kbar applied perpendicular to the magnetic field axis enhance the skyrmion lattice phase substantially, whereas the skyrmion lattice phase is suppressed for pressure parallel to the field. Taken together we present quantitative microscopic information how strain couples to magnetic order in the chiral magnet MnSi.
We report results of high-resolution measurements of the emph{c$^*$}-axis expansivity ($alpha_{c^{*}}$) at the charge-ordering (CO) transition for the quasi-1D (TMTTF)$_{2}$X compounds with X = SbF$_6$ and Br and make a comparison with previous results for the X = PF$_6$ and AsF$_6$ salts. For X = SbF$_6$, due to the screening of the long-range Coulomb forces, a sharp $lambda$-type anomaly is observed at $T_{CO}$, which contrasts with the step-like mean-field anomaly at $T_{CO}$ for PF$_6$ and AsF$_6$, where CO occurs in the Mott-Hubbard charge-localized regime. For the latter two salts, a negative contribution to $alpha_{c^{*}}$ is observed above $T_{CO}$. This feature is assigned to the anions rigid-unit modes, which become inactive for $T$ $<$ $T_{CO}$. Our $alpha_{c^{*}}$ results for the X = Br salt, where such rigid-unit modes are absent, reveal no traces of such negative contribution, confirming the model based on the anions rigid-unit modes for the X = PF$_6$ and AsF$_6$ salts.
We report the structure and magnetism of PrOFeAs, one of the parent phases of the newly discovered Fe-As superconductors, as measured by neutron powder diffraction. In common with other REOFeAs materials, a tetragonal-orthorhombic phase transition is found on cooling below 136 K and striped Fe magnetism with $k =$(1,0,1) is detected below $sim$ 85 K. Our magnetic order parameter measurements show that the ordered Fe moment along the a axis reaches a maximum at $sim$ 40 K, below which an anomalous expansion of the c axis sets in, which results in a negative thermal volume expansion of 0.015 % at 2 K. We propose that this effect, which is suppressed in superconducting samples, is driven by a delicate interplay between Fe and Pr ordered moments.
We present high-resolution thermal-expansion and specific-heat measurements of single crystalline alpha-RuCl3. An extremely hysteretic structural transition expanding over 100 K is observed by thermal- expansion along both crystallographic axes, which we attribute to a change of stacking sequence of the RuCl3 layers. Three magnetic transitions are observed, which we link to the different stacking sequences. Using our data and thermodynamic relations, we derive the uniaxial and hydrostatic pressure derivatives of all three magnetic transitions. Our results demonstrate that magnetic order should be totally suppressed by very moderate pressures of 0.3 GPa to 0.9 GPa. Finally, we discuss why our results differ from recent hydrostatic pressure measurements and suggest a possible route to reaching the spin-liquid state in alpha-RuCl3.
We report a study of the topological Hall effect (THE) in Fe-doped MnSi and compare with results from pure MnSi under pressure. We find that Fe doping increases the THE, indicating an enhancement of the magnitude of the emergent gauge field. This is consistent with the concurrent reduction in the length scale of the skyrmion lattice. For both pressurized and doped samples, we calculate the emergent magnetic field based on the size of the measured THE, and compare it with a theoretical upper-bound. We find that the ratio of these two remains more or less constant with pressure or Fe doping, but differs greatly from that of pure MnSi at ambient pressure. We discuss the implications of this ratio with respect to trends in the saturated magnetic moment and helical pitch length as T_C rightarrow 0 via doping and pressure, respectively.