Home > Publications database > Partial Up-Up-Down Order with the Continuously Distributed Order Parameter in the Triangular Antiferromagnet TmMgGaO 4 |
Journal Article | FZJ-2020-00155 |
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2020
APS
College Park, Md.
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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/23843 doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.10.011007
Abstract: We show that frustrated quasidoublets without time-reversal symmetry can host highly unconventional magnetic structures with continuously distributed order parameters even in a single-phase crystal. Our study comprises a comprehensive thermodynamic and neutron diffraction investigation on the single crystal of TmMgGaO4, which entails non-Kramers Tm3+ ions arranged on a geometrically perfect triangular lattice. The crystal electric field randomness caused by the site-mixing disorder of the nonmagnetic Mg2+ and Ga3+ ions merges two lowest-lying crystal electric field singlets of Tm3+ into a ground-state quasidoublet. Well below Tc∼0.7 K, a small fraction of the antiferromagnetically coupled Tm3+ Ising quasidoublets with small inner gaps condense into two-dimensional up-up-down magnetic structures with continuously distributed order parameters, and give rise to the columnar magnetic neutron reflections below μ0Hc∼2.6 T, with highly anisotropic correlation lengths, ξab≥250a in the triangular plane and ξc<c/12 between the planes. The remaining fraction of the Tm3+ ions remain nonmagnetic at 0 T and become uniformly polarized by the applied longitudinal field at low temperatures. We argue that the similar model can be generally applied to other compounds of non-Kramers rare-earth ions with correlated ground-state quasidoublets.
Keyword(s): Magnetic Materials (1st) ; Magnetism (2nd) ; Condensed Matter Physics (2nd)
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