We report on the study of a magnetic dislocation in pure chromium. Coherent x-ray diffraction profiles obtained on the incommensurate Spin Density Wave (SDW) reflection are consistent with the presence of a dislocation of the magnetic order, embedded at a few micrometers from the surface of the sample. Beyond the specific case of magnetic dislocations in chromium, this work may open up a new method for the study of magnetic defects embedded in the bulk.
We investigate the thermal-driven charge density wave (CDW) transition of two cubic superconducting intermetallic systems Lu(Pt1-xPdx)2In and (Sr1-xCax)3Ir4Sn13 by means of x-ray diffraction technique. A detailed analysis of the CDW modulation superlattice peaks as function of temperature is performed for both systems as the CDW transition temperature T_CDW is suppressed to zero by an non-thermal control parameter. Our results indicate an interesting crossover of the classical thermal-driven CDW order parameter critical exponent from a three-dimensional universality class to a mean-field tendency, as T_CDW vanishes. Such behavior might be associated with presence of quantum fluctuations which influences the classical second-order phase transition, strongly suggesting the presence of a quantum critical point (QCP) at T_CDW = 0. This also provides experimental evidence that the effective dimensionality exceeds its upper critical dimension due to a quantum phase transition.
CeB6, a typical Gamma_8-quartet system, exhibits a mysterious antiferroquadrupolar ordered phase in magnetic fields, which is considered as originating from the T_{xyz}-type magnetic octupole moment induced by the field. By resonant x-ray diffraction in magnetic fields, we have verified that the T_{xyz}-type octupole is indeed induced in the 4f-orbital of Ce with a propagation vector (1/2, 1/2, 1/2), thereby supporting the theory. We observed an asymmetric field dependence of the intensity for an electric quadrupole (E2) resonance when the field was reversed, and extracted a field dependence of the octupole by utilizing the interference with an electric dipole (E1) resonance. The result is in good agreement with that of the NMR-line splitting, which reflects the transferred hyperfine field at the Boron nucleus from the anisotropic spin distribution of Ce with an O_{xy}-type quadrupole. The field-reversal method used in the present study opens up the possibility of being widely applied to other multipole ordering systems such as NpO2, Ce_{x}La_{1-x}B_{6}, SmRu_{4}P_{12}, and so on.
Multiferroic TbMnO3 is investigated using x-ray diffraction in high magnetic fields. Measurements on first and second harmonic structural reflections due to modulations induced by the Mn and Tb magnetic order are presented as function of temperature and field oriented along the a and b-directions of the crystal. The relation to changes in ordering of the rare earth moments in applied field is discussed. Observations below T_N(Tb) without and with applied magnetic field point to a strong interaction of the rare earth order, the Mn moments and the lattice. Also, the incommensurate to commensurate transition of the wave vector at the critical fields is discussed with respect to the Tb and Mn magnetic order and a phase diagram on basis of these observations for magnetic fields H||a and H||b is presented. The observations point to a complicated and delicate magneto-elastic interaction as function of temperature and field.
We theoretically investigate spin dynamics and $L_3$-edge resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) of Chromium with commensurate spin-density wave (SDW) order, based on a multi-band Hubbard model composed of 3$d$ and 4$s$ orbitals. Obtaining the ground state with the SDW mean-field approximation, we calculate the dynamical transverse and longitudinal spin susceptibility by using random-phase approximation. We find that a collective spin-wave excitation seen in inelastic neutron scattering hardly damps up to $sim$0.6 eV. Above the energy, the excitation overlaps individual particle-hole excitations as expected, leading to broad spectral weight. On the other hand, the collective spin-wave excitation in RIXS spectra has a tendency to be masked by large spectral weight coming from particle-hole excitations with various orbital channels. This is in contrast with inelastic neutron scattering, where only selected diagonal orbital channels contribute to the spectral weight. However, it may be possible to detect the spin-wave excitation in RIXS experiments in the future if resolution is high enough.
The dynamics of the photoinduced commensurate to incommensurate charge density wave (CDW) phase transition in 4Hb-TaSe2 are investigated by femtosecond electron diffraction. In the perturbative regime the CDW reforms on a 150 ps timescale, which is two orders of magnitude slower than in other transition-metal dichalcogenides. We attribute this to a weak coupling between the CDW carrying T-layers and thus demonstrate the importance of three-dimensionality for the existence of CDWs. With increasing optical excitation the phase transition is achieved showing a second order character in contrast to the first order behavior in thermal equilibrium.