No Arabic abstract
This paper presents results of a recent study of multiferroic CCO by means of single crystal neutron diffraction. This system has two close magnetic phase transitions at $T sub{N1}=24.2$ K and $T sub{N2}=23.6$ K. The low temperature magnetic structure below $T sub{N2}$ is unambiguously determined to be a fully 3-dimensional proper screw. Between $T sub{N1}$ and $T sub{N2}$ antiferromagnetic order is found that is essentially 2-dimensional. In this narrow temperature range, magnetic near neighbor correlations are still long range in the ($H,K$) plane, whereas nearest neighbors along the $L$-direction are uncorrelated. Thus, the multiferroic state is realized only in the low-temperature 3-dimensional state and not in the 2-dimensional state.
The magnetic structure of CsCo2Se2 was investigated using single-crystal neutron diffraction technique. An antiferromagnetic transition with the propagation vector (0,0,1) was observed at T_N = 78 K. The Co magnetic moment 0.772(6) {mu}_B at 10 K pointing in the basal plane couples ferromagnetically in the plane which stacks antiferromagnetically along the c direction. Tuning and suppressing the interplane antiferromagnetic interaction may be crucial to induce the material to a superconducting state.
We have investigated the temperature evolution of the magnetic structures of HoFeO$_3$ by single crystal neutron diffraction. The three different magnetic structures found as a function of temperature for hfo are described by the magnetic groups Pb$$n$2_1$, Pbn$2_1$ and Pbn$2_1$ and are stable in the temperature ranges $approx$ 600-55~K, 55-37~K and 35$>T>2$~K respectively. In all three the fundamental coupling between the Fe sub-lattices remains the same and only their orientation and the degree of canting away from the ideal axial direction varies. The magnetic polarisation of the Ho sub-lattices in these two higher temperature regions, in which the major components of the Fe moment lie along $x$ and $y$, is very small. The canting of the moments from the axial directions is attributed to the antisymmetric interactions allowed by the crystal symmetry. They include contributions from single ion anisotropy as well as the Dzyaloshinski antisymmetric exchange. In the low temperature phase two further structural transitions are apparent in which the spontaneous magnetisation changes sign with respect to the underlying antiferromagnetic configuration. In this temperature range the antisymmetric exchange energy varies rapidly as the the Ho sub-lattices begin to order. So long as the ordered Ho moments are small the antisymmetric exchange is due only to Fe-Fe interactions, but as the degree of Ho order increases the Fe-Ho interactions take over whilst at the lowest temperatures, when the Ho moments approach saturation the Ho-Ho interactions dominate. The reversals of the spontaneous magnetisation found in this study suggest that in hfo the sums of the Fe-Fe and Ho-Ho antisymmetric interactions have the same sign as one another, but that of the Ho-Fe terms is opposite.
Polarised neutron diffraction measurements have been made on HoFeO$_3$ single crystals magnetised in both the [001] and [100] directions ($Pbnm$ setting). The polarisation dependencies of Bragg reflection intensities were measured both with a high field of H = 9 T parallel to [001] at T = 70 K and with the lower field H = 0.5 T parallel to [100] at T = 5, 15, 25~K. A Fourier projection of magnetization induced parallel to [001], made using the $hk0$ reflections measured in 9~T, indicates that almost all of it is due to alignment of Ho moments. Further analysis of the asymmetries of general reflections in these data showed that although, at 70~K, 9~T applied parallel to [001] hardly perturbs the antiferromagnetic order of the Fe sublattices, it induces significant antiferromagnetic order of the Ho sublattices in the $xmhyphen y$ plane, with the antiferromagnetic components of moment having the same order of magnitude as the induced ferromagnetic ones. Strong intensity asymmetries measured in the low temperature $Gamma_2$ structure with a lower field, 0.5 T $parallel$ [100] allowed the variation of the ordered components of the Ho and Fe moments to be followed. Their absolute orientations, in the 180degree domain stabilised by the field were determined relative to the distorted perovskite structure,. This relationship fixes the sign of the Dzyalshinski-Moriya (D-M) interaction which leads to the weak ferromagnetism. Our results indicate that the combination of strong y-axis anisotropy of the Ho moments and Ho-Fe exchange interactions breaks the centrosymmetry of the structure and could lead to ferroelectric polarization.
Among various parent compounds of iron pnictide superconductors, EuFe2As2 stands out due to the presence of both spin density wave of Fe and antiferromagnetic ordering (AFM) of the localized Eu2+ moment. Single crystal neutron diffraction studies have been carried out to determine the magnetic structure of this compound and to investigate the coupling of two magnetic sublattices. Long range AFM ordering of Fe and Eu spins was observed below 190 K and 19 K, respectively. The ordering of Fe2+ moments is associated with the wave vector k = (1,0,1) and it takes place at the same temperature as the tetragonal to orthorhombic structural phase transition, which indicates the strong coupling between structural and magnetic components. The ordering of Eu moment is associated with the wave vector k = (0,0,1). While both Fe and Eu spins are aligned along the long a axis as experimentally determined, our studies suggest a weak coupling between the Fe and Eu magnetism.
The magnetic structure of the spin-chain antiferromagnet SrCo2V2O8 is determined by single-crystal neutron diffraction experiment. The system undergoes magnetic long range order below T_N = 4.96 K. The moment of 2.16{mu}_B per Co at 1.6 K in the screw chain running along the c axis alternates in the c-axis. The moments of neighboring screw chains are arranged antiferromagnetically along one in-plane axis and ferromagnetically along the other in-plane axis. This magnetic configuration breaks the 4-fold symmetry of the tetragonal crystal structure and leads to two equally populated magnetic twins with antiferromagnetic vector in the a or b axis. The very similar magnetic state to the isostructural BaCo2V2O8 warrants SrCo2V2O8 another interesting half-integer spin-chain antiferromagnet for investigation on quantum antiferromagnetism.