We reinvestigate the pressure dependence of the crystal structure and antiferromagnetic phase transition in MnTe$_2$ by the rigorous and reliable tool of high pressure neutron powder diffraction. First-principles density functional theory calculation
s are carried out in order to gain microscopic insight. The measured Neel temperature of MnTe$_2$ is found to show unusually large pressure dependence of $12$ K GPa$^{-1}$. This gives rise to large violation of Blochs rule given by $alpha=frac{dlog T_N}{dlog V}=-frac{10}{3} approx -3.3$, to a $alpha$ value of -6.0 $pm$ 0.1 for MnTe$_2$. The ab-initio calculation of the electronic structure and the magnetic exchange interactions in MnTe$_2$, for the measured crystal structures at different pressures, gives the pressure dependence of the Neel temperature, $alpha$ to be -5.61, in close agreement with experimental finding. The microscopic origin of this behavior turns to be dictated by the distance dependence of the cation-anion hopping interaction strength.
The recent surge of interest in phase change materials GeTe, Ge$_2$Sb$_2$Te$_5$, and related compounds motivated us to revisit the structural phase transition in GeTe in more details than was done before. Rhombohedral-to-cubic ferroelectric phase tra
nsition in GeTe has been studied by high resolution neutron powder diffraction on a spallation neutron source. We determined the temperature dependence of the structural parameters in a wide temperature range extending from 309 to 973 K. Results of our studies clearly show an anomalous volume contraction of 0.6% at the phase transition from the rhombohedral to cubic phase. In order to better understand the phase transition and the associated anomalous volume decrease in GeTe we have performed phonon calculations based on the density functional theory. Results of the present investigations are also discussed with respect to the experimental data obtained for single crystals of GeTe.
The effect of hydrostatic pressure on resistivity and magnetic ac susceptibility has been studied in Mn-doped CdGeAs2 room-temperature (RT) ferromagnetic chalcopyrite with two types of MnAs micro-clusters. The slight increase of temperature by about
30 K in the region between RT and Curie temperature TC causes a significant change in the positions of pressure-induced semiconductor-metal transition and magnetic phase transitions in low pressure area. By conducting measurements of the anomalous Hall resistance in the field H leq 5 kOe, we present experimental evidence for pressure-induced metamagnetic-like state during the paramagnetic phase at pressure P = 5 GPa.
We investigated the dispersion of nuclear spin waves in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$ by using neutron spin-echo spectroscopy at millikelvin temperatures. Our results show unambiguously the existence of dispersion of nuclear spin waves in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$ at T = 30 mK.
A fit of the dispersion data with the spin wave dispersion formula gave the Suhl-Nakamura interaction range to be of the order of 10 {AA}.
We report the results of inelastic neutron scattering investigation on the model antiferromagnet CoF$_2$ by time-of-flight neutron spectroscopy. We measured the details of the scattering function $S(Q,omega)$ as a function of temperature with two dif
ferent incident neutron wavelengths. The temperature and Q dependence of the measured scattering function suggests the presence of magnon-phonon coupling in almost all branches. The present results are in agreement with the strong magnetoelastic effects observed previously.
We investigated low energy nuclear spin excitations in the layered compound CoCl$_2$ by high resolution back-scattering neutron spectroscopy. We detected inelastic peaks at $E = 1.34 pm 0.03$ $mu$eV on both energy loss and energy sides of the central
elastic peak at $T = 2$ K. The energy of the inelastic peaks decrease with temperature continuously and become zero at $T_N approx 25$ K at which the two ielastic peaks merge with the central elastic peak. We interpret the low energy excitations to be due to the transition between hyperfine field split nuclear levels. The present data together with the data on other Co compounds show that the energy of the nuclear spin excitations of a number of compounds follow a linear relationship with the electronic magnetic moment of the Co ion whereas that of other compounds deviate appreciably from this linear behaviour. We ascribe this anomalous behaviour to the presence of unquenched orbital moments of the Co ions.
We have investigated low energy nuclear spin excitations in strongly correlated electron compound HoCrO$_3$. We observe clear inelastic peaks at $E = 22.18 pm 0.04$ $mu eV$ in both energy loss and gain sides. The energy of the inelastic peaks remains
constant in the temperature range 1.5 - 40 K at which they are observed. The intensity of the inelastic peak increases at first with increasing temperature and then decreases at higher temperatures. The temperature dependence of the energy and intensity of the inelastic peaks is very unusual compared to that observed in other Nd, Co and V compounds. Huge quasielastic scattering appears at higher temperatures presumably due to the fluctuating electronic moments of the Ho ions that get increasingly disordered at higher temperatures.
