We report 57Fe Mossbauer spectral results in pure and doped Ba(Fe1-xNix)2As2 with x=0.01 and 0.03. We show that all these materials present a first-order magnetic transition towards a magnetically ordered state. In the doped compounds, a broad distri
bution of Fe hyperfine fields is present in the magnetic phase. We successfully fit the Mossbauer data in Ba(Fe1-xNix)2As2 in the framework of two different models: 1) an incommensurate spin density wave; 2) a dopant-induced perturbation of the Fe polarization, recently proposed to interpret 75As NMR data in Ba(Fe1-xNix)2As2, which is valid only in the very dilute limit x=0.01. Moreover, we show here that these NMR data can also be successfully analysed in terms of the incommensurate model for all doping contents by using the parameters obtained from the Mossbauer spectral analysis. Therefore it is not possible to rule out the presence of an incommensurate spin density wave on the basis of the 75As NMR data.
We report resistivity and Hall effect results on Ba(Fe1-xNix)2As2 and compare them with those in Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2. The Hall number RH is negative for all x values from 0.01 to 0.14, which indicates that electron carriers dominate the transport both i
n the magnetic and paramagnetic regime. We analyse the data in the framework of a two-band model. Without any assumption on the number of carriers, we show that the electron resistivity can be estimated with good accuracy in the low temperature paramagnetic range. Although the phase diagrams of the two families are very similar with respect to the extra electrons added in the system, we find that the transport properties differ in several aspects. First, we evidence that the contribution of holes to the transport is more important for Ni doping than for Co doping. Secondly, Ni behaves as a stronger scatterer for the electrons, as the increase of the residual electron resistivity rho/x is about four times larger for Ni than for Co in the most doped samples.
We report a muSR study of LiCrO2, which has a magnetic lattice made up of a stacking of triangular Heisenberg antiferromagnetic (Cr3+, S = 3/2) layers. A static magnetically ordered state is observed below the transition temperature T_N = 62 K, while
the expected peak of the relaxation rate is slightly shifted downward by a few kelvins below T_N. We draw a comparison with the isostructural compound NaCrO2, where an exotic broad fluctuating regime has been observed [A. Olariu, P. Mendels, F. Bert, B. G. Ueland, P. Schiffer, R. F. Berger, and R. J. Cava, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 167203 (2006)] and was suggested to originate from topological excitations of the triangular lattice. Replacing Na by Li strongly narrows the exotic fluctuating regime formerly observed in NaCrO2, which we attribute to a more pronounced inter-plane coupling in LiCrO2.
