Two-dimensional magnetic correlations and partial long-range order in geometrically frustrated Sr2YRuO6

Antiferromagnetically Coupled Double Perovskite as an Efficient and Robust Catalyst for Visible Light Driven Water Splitting at Neutral pH

Green and sustainable energy production through renewable sources is enormously an exciting field of research. Herein, we report A-site lanthanum doped oxygen excess ruthenate (predominantly Ru5+-ions) double perovskite system, CaLaScRuO6+δ...

Dimensional reduction by geometrical frustration in a cubic antiferromagnet composed of tetrahedral clusters

Dimensionality is a critical factor in determining the properties of solids and is an apparent built-in character of the crystal structure. However, it can be an emergent and tunable property in geometrically frustrated spin systems. Here, we study the spin dynamics of the tetrahedral cluster antiferromagnet, pharmacosiderite, via muon spin resonance and neutron scattering. We find that the spin correlation exhibits a two-dimensional characteristic despite the isotropic connectivity of tetrahedral clusters made of spin 5/2 Fe3+ ions in the three-dimensional cubic crystal, which we ascribe to two-dimensionalisation by geometrical frustration based on spin wave calculations. Moreover, we suggest that even one-dimensionalisation occurs in the decoupled layers, generating low-energy and one-dimensional excitation modes, causing large spin fluctuation in the classical spin system. Pharmacosiderite facilitates studying the emergence of low-dimensionality and manipulating anisotropic responses arising from the dimensionality using an external magnetic field.

The complex non-collinear magnetic orderings in Ba2YOsO6: a new approach to tuning spin-lattice interactions and controlling magnetic orderings in frustrated complex oxides

Frustrated magnets are one class of fascinating materials that host many intriguing phases such as spin ice, spin liquid and complex long-range magnetic orderings at low temperatures. In this work we use first-principles calculations to find that in a wide range of magnetically frustrated oxides, at zero temperature a number of non-collinear magnetic orderings are more stable than the type-I collinear ordering that is observed at finite temperatures. The emergence of non-collinear orderings in those complex oxides is due to higher-order exchange interactions that originate from second-row and third-row transition metal elements. This implies a collinear-to-noncollinear spin transition at sufficiently low temperatures in those frustrated complex oxides. Furthermore, we find that in a particular oxide Ba₂YOsO₆, experimentally feasible uniaxial strain can tune the material between two different non-collinear magnetic orderings. Our work predicts new non-collinear magnetic orderings in frustrated complex oxides at very low temperatures and provides a mechanical route to tuning complex non-collinear magnetic orderings in those materials.

Ising antiferromagnet on the 2-uniform lattices

The antiferromagnetic Ising model is investigated on the twenty 2-uniform lattices using the Monte Carlo method based on the Wang-Landau algorithm and the Metropolis algorithm to study the geometric frustration effect systematically. Based on the specific heat, the residual entropy, and the Edwards-Anderson freezing order parameter, the ground states of them were determined. In addition to the long-range-ordered phase and the spin ice phase found in the Archimedean lattices, two more phases were found. The partial long-range order is long-range order with exceptional disordered sites, which give extensive residual entropy. In the partial spin ice phase, the partial freezing phenomenon appears: A majority of sites are frozen without long-range order, but the other sites are fluctuating even at zero temperature. The spin liquid ground state was not found in the 2-uniform lattices.

Fluctuation-driven selection at criticality in a frustrated magnetic system: the case of multiple-k partial order on the pyrochlore lattice

We study the problem of partially ordered phases with periodically arranged disordered (paramagnetic) sites on the pyrochlore lattice, a network of corner-sharing tetrahedra. The periodicity of these phases is characterized by one or more wave vectors k={1/21/21/2}. Starting from a general microscopic Hamiltonian including anisotropic nearest-neighbor exchange, long-range dipolar interactions, and second- and third-nearest neighbor exchange, we use standard mean-field theory (SMFT) to identify an extended range of interaction parameters that support partially ordered phases. We demonstrate that thermal fluctuations ignored in SMFT are responsible for the selection of one particular partially ordered phase, e.g., the "4-k" phase over the "1-k" phase. We suggest that the transition into the 4-k phase is continuous with its critical properties controlled by the cubic fixed point of a Ginzburg-Landau theory with a four-component vector order parameter. By combining an extension of the Thouless-Anderson-Palmer method originally used to study fluctuations in spin glasses with parallel-tempering Monte Carlo simulations, we establish the phase diagram for different types of partially ordered phases. Our results elucidate the long-standing puzzle concerning the origin of the 4-k partially ordered phase observed in the Gd2Ti2O7 dipolar pyrochlore antiferromagnet below its paramagnetic phase transition temperature.

Structural and magnetic properties of the ruthenium double perovskites Ba2−xSrxYRuO6

Doping Ba₂YRuO₆ with Sr induces octahedral tilting and significantly impacts on the magnetic properties.

Distinct magnetic phase transition at the surface of an antiferromagnet

In the majority of magnetic systems the surface is required to order at the same temperature as the bulk. In the present Letter, we report a distinct and unexpected surface magnetic phase transition at a lower temperature than the Néel temperature. Employing grazing incidence x-ray resonant magnetic scattering, we have observed the near-surface behavior of uranium dioxide. UO2 is a noncollinear, triple-q, antiferromagnet with the U ions on a face-centered cubic lattice. Theoretical investigations establish that at the surface the energy increase-due to the lost bonds-is reduced when the spins near the surface rotate, gradually losing their component normal to the surface. At the surface the lowest-energy spin configuration has a double-q (planar) structure. With increasing temperature, thermal fluctuations saturate the in-plane crystal field anisotropy at the surface, leading to soft excitations that have ferromagnetic XY character and are decoupled from the bulk. The structure factor of a finite two-dimensional XY model fits the experimental data well for several orders of magnitude of the scattered intensity. Our results support a distinct magnetic transition at the surface in the Kosterlitz-Thouless universality class.

Exotic magnetism on the quasi-fcc lattices of the d3 double Perovskites La2NaB'O6 (B'=Ru, Os)

We find evidence for long-range and short-range (ζ=70 Å at 4 K) incommensurate magnetic order on the quasi-face-centered-cubic (fcc) lattices of the monoclinic double perovskites La2NaRuO6 and La2NaOsO6, respectively. Incommensurate magnetic order on the fcc lattice has not been predicted by mean field theory, but may arise via a delicate balance of inequivalent nearest neighbor and next nearest neighbor exchange interactions. In the Ru system with long-range order, inelastic neutron scattering also reveals a spin gap Δ ∼ 2.75 meV. Magnetic anisotropy is generally minimized in the more familiar octahedrally coordinated 3d3 systems, so the large gap observed for La2NaRuO6 may result from the significantly enhanced value of spin-orbit coupling in this 4d(3) material.

SPINVERT: a program for refinement of paramagnetic diffuse scattering data

We present a program (spinvert; http://spinvert.chem.ox.ac.uk) for refinement of magnetic diffuse scattering data for frustrated magnets, spin liquids, spin glasses, and other magnetically disordered materials. The approach uses reverse Monte Carlo refinement to fit a large configuration of spins to experimental powder neutron diffraction data. Despite fitting to spherically averaged data, this approach allows the recovery of the three-dimensional magnetic diffuse scattering pattern and the spin-pair correlation function. We illustrate the use of the spinvert program with two case studies. First, we use simulated powder data for the canonical antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice to discuss the sensitivity of spinvert refinement to both pairwise and higher-order spin correlations. The effect of limited experimental data on the results is also considered. Second, we re-analyse published experimental data on the frustrated system Y0.5Ca0.5BaCo4O7. The results from spinvert refinement indicate similarities between Y0.5Ca0.5BaCo4O7 and its parent compound YBaCo4O7, which were overlooked in previous analyses using powder data.

Lattice instability and competing spin structures in the double perovskite insulator Sr2FeOsO6

The semiconductor Sr2FeOsO6, depending on temperature, adopts two types of spin structures that differ in the spin sequence of ferrimagnetic iron-osmium layers along the tetragonal c axis. Neutron powder diffraction experiments, 57Fe Mössbauer spectra, and density functional theory calculations suggest that this behavior arises because a lattice instability resulting in alternating iron-osmium distances fine-tunes the balance of competing exchange interactions. Thus, Sr2FeOsO6 is an example of a double perovskite, in which the electronic phases are controlled by the interplay of spin, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom.