Magnetic Phase Separation in a Frustrated Antiferromagnet

DOI

Frustrated magnetic materials are interesting because they show unusual behaviour arising from a near-degeneracy of ground states. The magnetic order of MgCr2O4 - apparently built from two symmetry-unrelated wavevectors - is an exotic example. Recent results suggest that magnetic order may involve frustration-induced phase separation into two nearly-degenerate states that couple differently to the lattice, leading to different lattice distortions from the cubic high-temperature phase. To test this hypothesis, we propose to use high-resolution powder and single-crystal diffraction to (i) determine if the magnetic structure is a single or two-phase; (ii) find the ordering wave vectors with respect to the low-temperature distorted crystal structure(s); (iii) solve the spin arrangements. Our results would reveal the nature of frustration and its coupling to the lattice in a topical magnet.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.82360536
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/82360536
Provenance
Creator Dr Seyed Koohpayeh; Dr Pascal Manuel; Dr Joe Paddison; Professor Martin Mourigal; Mr Xiaojian Bai
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2019
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Natural Sciences; Physics
Temporal Coverage Begin 2016-10-24T07:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2016-10-26T07:00:00Z