Pressure induced critical behavior of ferromagnetic phase transition in Sm-Nd-Sr manganites

Nature of novel criticality in ternary transition-metal oxides

There are the chains of transition-metal cations alternating with the anions of oxygen in ternary transition-metal oxides. When a p-orbital of the oxygen connects the half-filled and empty d-orbitals of adjacent transition-metal cations, double-exchange ferromagnetism takes place. Although double exchange has been well explored, the nature of novel criticality, induced by it, is yet not uncovered. We explored the magnetic-field scaling in the heat capacity of a Sm_0.55Sr_0.45MnO₃ manganite, one of the best ternary transition-metal oxides as it is completely ferromagnetic, and found novel criticality - unordinary critical exponents which are the consequence of coherence of Coulomb lattice distortion and ferromagnetism. The coherence is caused by the trinity of the mass, the charge and the spin of an electron. When the d and p orbitals overlaps, it quickly walks from one site to the another due its lightest mass. And due to its electric charge, it equalizes the valences of the transition-metal cations in the chains and so diminishes the Coulomb lattice distortion. At last, its spin forces magnetic moments of transition-metal cations to ferromagnetically arrange. The disappearance of Coulomb distortions widens the overlap and lowers the elastic lattice energy, so that not only the spin of an electron, but also its electric charge strengthens ferromagnetism. That nonlinear effect strengthens the critical behaviour and critical exponents come off any known universality classes. Thus, the symbiotic coherence of annihilating Coulomb distortions and arising ferromagnetism is a reason of the novel criticality.

Role of external and internal perturbations on ferromagnetic phase transitions in manganites: existence of tricritical points

A phenomenological mean-field theory is presented to describe the role of external magnetic field, pressure and chemical substitution on the nature of ferromagnetic (FM) to paramagnetic (PM) phase transition in manganites. The application of external field (or pressure) shifts the transition, leading to a field (or pressure) dependent phase boundary along which a tricritical point is shown to exist where a first-order FM-PM transition becomes second-order. We show that the effect of chemical substitution on the FM transition is analogous to that of external perturbations (magnetic field and pressure); this includes the existence of a tricritical point at which the order of transition changes. Our theoretical predictions satisfactorily explain the nature of FM-PM transition, observed in several systems. The modeling hypothesis has been critically verified from our experimental data from a wide range of colossal magnetoresistive manganite single crystals like Sm_0.52Sr_0.48MnO₃. The theoretical model prediction of a tricritical point has been validated in this experiment which provides a major ramification of the strength of the model proposed.

Continuously Varying Critical Exponents Beyond Weak Universality

Renormalization group theory does not restrict the form of continuous variation of critical exponents which occurs in presence of a marginal operator. However, the continuous variation of critical exponents, observed in different contexts, usually follows a weak universality scenario where some of the exponents (e.g., β, γ, ν) vary keeping others (e.g., δ, η) fixed. Here we report ferromagnetic phase transition in (Sm_1−yNd_y)_0.52Sr_0.48MnO₃ (0.5 ≤ y ≤ 1) single crystals where all three exponents β, γ, δ vary with Nd concentration y. Such a variation clearly violates both universality and weak universality hypothesis. We propose a new scaling theory that explains the present experimental results, reduces to the weak universality as a special case, and provides a generic route leading to continuous variation of critical exponents and multi-criticality.