Dielectric and magnetic phenomena in spin and charge frustrated system RFe2O4 (R is a rare-earth metal ion) are studied. An electronic model for charge, spin and orbital degrees in a pair of triangular-lattice planes is derived. We analyze this model by utilizing the mean-field approximation and the Monte-Carlo simulation in a finite size cluster. A three fold-type charge ordered structure with charge imbalance between the planes is stabilized in finite temperatures. This polar charge order is reinforced by spin ordering of Fe ions. This novel magneto-dielectric phenomenon is caused by spin frustration and charge-spin coupling in the exchange interaction. We show cross-correlation effect in magnetic- and electric-field responses. Oxygen deficiency effect as an impurity effect in a frustrated charge-spin coupled system is also examined.
We report on the magnetic properties of the layered perovskite PbVO(3). The results of magnetic susceptibility and specific heat measurements as well as band structure calculations consistently suggest that the S=1/2 square lattice of vanadium atoms in PbVO(3) is strongly frustrated due to next-nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic interactions. The ratio of next-nearest-neighbor (J(2)) to nearest-neighbor (J(1)) exchange integrals is estimated to be J(2)/J(1)\approx 0.2-0.4. Thus, PbVO(3) is within or close to the critical region of the J(1)-J(2) frustrated square lattice. Supporting this, no si…
A layered iron oxide \rfeo ($R$: rare-earth elements) is an exotic dielectric material with charge-order (CO) driven electric polarization and magnetoelectric effect caused by spin-charge coupling. In this paper, a theory of electronic structure and dielectric property in \rfeo is presented. Charge frustration in paired-triangular lattices allows a charge imbalance without inversion symmetry. Spin frustration induces reinforcement of this polar CO by a magnetic ordering. We also analyze an orbital model for the Fe ion which does not show a conventional long-range order.
We study the influence of the spin lattice distortion on the properties of frustrated magnetic systems and consider the applicability of the spin-1/2 frustrated square lattice model to materials lacking tetragonal symmetry. We focus on the case of layered vanadium phosphates AA'VO(PO4)2 (AA' = Pb2, SrZn, BaZn, and BaCd). To provide a proper microscopic description of these compounds, we use extensive band structure calculations for real materials and model structures and supplement this analysis with simulations of thermodynamic properties, thus facilitating a direct comparison with the experi…
We present a computational study of the layered copper oxychloride [CuCl]LaNb(2)O(7) that has been recently proposed as a spin-1/2 frustrated square lattice compound. Our results evidence an orbitally degenerate ground state for the reported tetragonal crystal structure and reveal a Jahn-Teller-type structural distortion. This distortion heavily changes the local environment of copper -- CuO(2)Cl(2) plaquettes are formed instead of CuO(2)Cl(4) octahedra -- and restores the single-orbital scenario typical for copper oxides and oxyhalides. The calculated distortion is consistent with the availab…
The self-consistent treatment of real and imaginary renormalizations in the dynamic spin susceptibility for the frustrated Heisenberg model reproduces for cuprates at low doping: a spin spectrum, a saddle point for q near (pi/2,pi/2), nearly constant q-integrated susceptibility for energy less than 150 meV and a scaling law. Frustration increase (optimally doped case) leads to a stripe scenario with a saddle point at q near (pi,pi/2) and $χ_{2D}(ω)$ peak near 30meV. The obtained $χ(\mathbf{q},ω)$ describes neutron scattering results and leads to well-known temperature transport anomalies in do…
Structural and magnetic properties of the geometrically frustrated layered compound YBaCo4O7 have been studied by magnetization and neutron diffraction. A layered type crystal structure, with alternating tetrahedral layers of Kagomé and triangular types, along the c axis (hexagonal symmetry, space group P63mc) has been found. The oxygen content of the present compound was determined by iodometric titration to be 7.00{\pm}0.01. Presence of a short-range antiferromagnetic ordering (below TN ~ 110 K) has been concluded from the appearance of an addition broad magnetic peak (at Q ~ 1.35 Å-1) in th…
First-principles calculations and a model consideration of magnetically frustrated layered material PdCrO$_2$ are performed. The results on the exchange parameters are in agreement with the experimental data on the Curie-Weiss temperature ($θ$). We show that experimentally observed strong suppression of the Néel temperature ($T_N$) in comparison with the Curie-Weiss temperature is due to three main factors. First, as expected, this is connected with the layered structure and relatively small exchange interaction along the $c$ axis. Second, deformation of the ideal in-plane 120$^{\circ}$ magnet…
Effects of Fe-substitution on the crystal structure and magnetic correlations of the geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets YBaCo4-xFexO7+δ (x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, and 0.8) have been studied by neutron diffraction, Mössbauer spectroscopy, and ac susceptibility. The compounds YBaCo4-xFexO7+δ have a special layered-type crystal structure with an alternating Kagomé (6c site) and triangular (2a site) layers along the c axis. Fe3+ ions are found to be substituted at both the crystallographic 2a and 6c sites of Co ions. Mössbauer results show a high spin state of Fe3+ ions in a tetrahedral co…
We investigate the magnetocaloric properties of certain antiferromagnetic spin systems that have already been or very likely can be synthesized as magnetic molecules. It turns out that the special geometric frustration which is present in antiferromagnets that consist of corner-sharing triangles leads to an enhanced magnetocaloric effect with high cooling rates in the vicinity of the saturation field. These findings are compared with the behavior of a simple unfrustrated spin ring as well as with the properties of the icosahedron. To our surprise, also for the icosahedron large cooling rates c…
We use series expansion methods to study ground- and excited-state properties in the helically ordered phase of spin-1/2 frustrated antiferromagnets on an anisotropic triangular lattice. We calculate the ground state energy, ordering wavevector, sublattice magnetization and one-magnon excitation spectrum for parameters relevant to Cs_2CuCl_4 and Cs_2CuBr_4. Both materials are modeled in terms of a Heisenberg model with spatially anisotropic exchange constants; for Cs_2CuCl_4 we also take into account the additional Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction. We compare our results for Cs_2CuCl_4 w…
We have investigated the magnetic, dielectric and magnetodielectric (MDE) behavior of a geometrically frustrated spin-chain system, Ca3Co1.4Rh0.6O6, in the single crystalline form for different orientations. The results bring out that the magnetic behavior of this compound is by itself interesting in the sense that this compound exhibits an anisotropic glassy-like magnetic behavior with a huge frequency dependence of ac susceptibility peak for an orientation along the spin-chain in the range 30-60 K; this behavior is robust to applications of large external magnetic fields (H) unlike in canoni…
The magnetoelectric (ME) effects are investigated in a cubic compound SrCuTe2O6, in which uniform Cu2+ (S=1/2) spin chains with considerable spin frustration exhibit a concomitant antiferromagnetic transition and dielectric constant peak at TN=5.5 K. Pyroelectric Jp(T) and magnetoelectric current JME(H) measurements in the presence of a bias electric field are used to reveal that SrCuTe2O6 shows clear variations of Jp(T) across TN at constant magnetic fields. Furthermore, isothermal measurements of JME(H) also develop clear peaks at finite magnetic fields, of which traces are consistent with t…
We report on high-field magnetization measurements for a number of layered vanadium phosphates that were recently recognized as spin-1/2 frustrated square lattice compounds with ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor couplings (J_1) and antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor couplings (J_2). The saturation fields of the materials lie in the range from 4 to 24 T and show excellent agreement with the previous estimates of the exchange couplings deduced from low-field thermodynamic measurements. The consistency of the high-field data with the regular frustrated square lattice model provides experimental…
We have studied the magneto-elastic coupling in the double layered Mn perovskite La$_{1.2}$Sr$_{1.8}$Mn$_2$O$_7$ with an ultrasonic velocity technique. The temperature profile of both the in-plane and out-of-plane longitudinal velocities showed a large stiffening anomaly below the insulating paramagnetic to metallic ferromagnetic transition. Magnetic fluctuations effects consistent with the layered structure are evidenced as a frequency dependent velocity softening above the transition. The magneto-elastic coupling has been studied in magnetic field values up to 8 Tesla: the observations are c…
As materials with suppressed ordering temperatures and enhanced ground state entropies, frustrated magnetic oxides are ideal candidates for cryogenic magnetocaloric refrigeration. While previous materials design has focused on tuning the magnetic moments, their interactions, and density of moments on the lattice, there has been relatively little attention to frustrated lattices. Prior theoretical work has shown that the magnetocaloric cooling rate at the saturation field is proportional to a macroscopic number of soft mode excitations that arise due to the classical ground state degeneracy. Th…
We report an experimental and theoretical study of the low-temperature specific heat $C$ and magnetic susceptibility $χ$ of the layered anisotropic triangular-lattice spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets Cs$_2$CuCl$_{4-x}$Br$_x$ with $x$ = 0, 1, 2, and 4. We find that the ratio $J'/J$ of the exchange couplings ranges from 0.32 to $\approx 0.78$, implying a change (crossover or quantum phase transition) in the materials' magnetic properties from one-dimensional (1D) behavior for $J'/J < 0.6$ to two-dimensional (2D) behavior for $J'/J \approx 0.78$ behavior. For $J'/J < 0.6$, realized for $x$ = …
Based on measurements of soft x-ray magnetic scattering and symmetry considerations, we demonstrate that the magnetoelectric effect in TbMn$_2$O$_5$ arises from an internal field determined by $\vec{S}_{\vec{q}} \times {\vec{S}_{-\vec{q}}}$ with $\vec{S}_{\vec{q}}$ being the magnetization at modulation vector $\vec{q}$, whereas the magneto-elastic effect in the exchange energy governs the response to external electric fields. Our results set fundamental symmetry constraints on the microscopic mechanism of multiferroicity in frustrated magnets.
We present an exact diagonalization study on layered $J_{1}-J_{2}$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin model to examine the role of frustration induced by inplane next-nearest neighbor coupling $J_{2}$, in presence of interlayer antiferromagnetic coupling $J_{\perp}$. A finite lattice of 24 spins in layered geometry of $(4\times 3)\oplus (4\times 3)$ is considered and the resulting Hamiltonian matrix diagonalized using Davidson iterative algorithm to obtain the ground and a few low-lying excited states. The lattice size ($24$ spins with Hilbert space dimensionality of $2704156$ in $S_{z}^{tot}=0…
The magnetothermodynamics of strongly frustrated classical Heisenberg antiferromagnets on kagome, garnet, and pyrochlore lattices is examined. The field induced adiabatic temperature change (dT/dH)_S is significantly larger for such systems compared to ordinary non-frustrated magnets and also exceeds the cooling rate of an ideal paramagnet in a wide range of fields. An enhancement of the magnetocaloric effect is related to presence of a macroscopic number of soft modes in frustrated magnets below the saturation field. Theoretical predictions are confirmed with extensive Monte Carlo simulations…
The interplay of non-local Coulomb repulsion and Hund's coupling in the d-orbital manifold in frustrated triangular lattices is analyzed by a mutliband extended Hubbard model. We find a rich phase diagram with several competing phases, including a robust pinball liquid phase, which is an unconventional metal characterized by threefold charge order, bad metallic behavior and the emergence of high spin local moments. Our results naturally explain the anomalous charge-ordered metallic state observed in the triangular layered compound AgNiO2. The potential relevance to other triangular transition …
The layered compound La2-2xSr1+2xMn2O7 (x=0.3) consists of bilayers of metallic MnO2 sheets separated by insulating material. The compound exhibits markedly anisotropic magnetoresistance at temperatures well below the three-dimensional magnetic ordering temperature TC=90 K in addition to colossal magnetoresistance around TC. We present neutron diffraction data which show that the magnetic structure of this material switches from antiferromagnetic stacking of the (ferromagnetically ordered) sheets in zero field to ferromagnetic stacking in a field of 1.5 Tesla. The data are the first to be coll…
We study TmB_4, a frustrated magnet on the Archimedean Shastry-Sutherland lattice, through magnetization and transport experiments. The lack of anisotropy in resistivity shows that TmB_4 is an electronically three-dimensional system. The magnetoresistance (MR) is hysteretic at low-temperature even though a corresponding hysteresis in magnetization is absent. The Hall resistivity shows unconventional anomalous Hall effect (AHE) and is linear above saturation despite a large MR. We propose that complex structures at magnetic domain walls may be responsible for the hysteretic MR and may also lead…
We investigated the magnetoelastic properties of the quasi-one-dimensional spin-1/2 frustrated magnet LiCuVO$_4$. Longitudinal-magnetostriction experiments were performed at 1.5 K in high magnetic fields of up to 60 T applied along the $b$ axis, i.e., the spin-chain direction. The magnetostriction data qualitatively resemble the magnetization results, and saturate at $H_{\text{sat}} \approx 54$ T, with a relative change in sample length of $ΔL/L \approx 1.8\times10^{-4}$. Remarkably, both the magnetostriction and the magnetization evolve gradually between $H_{\text{c3}} \approx 48$ T and $H_{\…
The dielectric behavior of the single crystals of the spin-chain system Ca3Co2O6, undergoing geometrically frustrated antiferromagnetic ordering below 25 K, has been investigated as a function of temperature and magnetic field (H) and compared with magnetization (M) behavior. The results provide evidence for anisotropic magnetodielectric (MDE) coupling in this compound. Ac susceptibility exhibits a strong frequency dependence for H parallel c with changes of this feature with the application of external dc magnetic field. No feature in ac susceptibility could be observed for H perpendicular c,…
Ultrasound and magnetization studies of bond-frustrated ZnCr2S4 spinel are performed in static magnetic fields up to 18 T and in pulsed fields up to 62 T. At temperatures below the antiferromagnetic transition at T_N1 14 K the sound velocity as function of magnetic field reveals a sequence of steps followed by plateaus indicating a succession of crystallographic structures with constant stiffness. At the same time, the magnetization evolves continuously with field up to full magnetic polarization without any plateaus in contrast to geometrically frustrated chromium oxide spinels. The observed …
The ground state of the frustrated A-site magnetic spinel CoAl2O4 has been a controversial issue whether it is a collinear antiferromagnetic ordering or a spiral spin - liquid state, as the ratio of the two competing interactions, J2/J1 lies close to the boundary between these two ground states. Here, we address the magnetic ground state in CoAl2O4 with different amount of Co2+/Al3+ site disorder from the study of magnetoelectric effect and Monte Carlo simulations. CoAl2O4 with low site disorder exhibits linear magnetoelectric effect below the magnetic ordering temperature. With increasing dis…
We investigate the magnetocaloric properties of the two-dimensional frustrated J1-J2 model on a square lattice. This model describes well the magnetic behavior of two classes of quasi-two-dimensional S = 1/2 vanadates, namely the Li2VOXO4 (X = Si, Ge) and AA'VO(PO4)2 (A, A' = Pb, Zn, Sr, Ba) compounds. The magnetocaloric effect (MCE) consists in the adiabatic temperature change upon changing the external magnetic field. In frustrated systems, the MCE can be enhanced close to the saturation field because of massive degeneracies among low lying excitations. We discuss results for the MCE in the …
Magnetization, entropy and magnetocaloric properties of various geometrically frustrated tetrahedra-based Ising antiferromagnetic nanoclusters with corner-, edge-, and face-sharing topologies are studied by exact enumeration. It is found that the studied properties strongly depend on the nanocluster topology and can be very different from those of a single tetrahedron as well as the pyrochlore lattice formed by an infinite number of corner-sharing tetrahedra. From the magnetocaloric point of view an important difference from the latter two systems is the absence of the ground-state zero-magnet…
Crystal structure and magnetic properties of the layered vanadium phosphate PbZnVO(PO4)2 are studied using x-ray powder diffraction, magnetization and specific heat measurements, as well as band structure calculations. The compound resembles AA'VO(PO4)2 vanadium phosphates and fits to the extended frustrated square lattice model with the couplings J(1), J(1)' between nearest-neighbors and J(2), J(2)' between next-nearest-neighbors. The temperature dependence of the magnetization yields estimates of averaged nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor couplings, J(1) ~ -5.2 K and J(2) ~ 10.0 K, …
The magnetic and magnetocaloric (MCE) properties were studied in a stuffed honeycomb antiferromagnet GdInO3 polycrystalline. No long-range magnetic ordering was observed with only a sharp upturn in the temperature dependent magnetization curves at TN ~ 2.1 K. The large value of frustration index value ~ 5.0 suggests short-range antiferromagnetic interactions existing between the Gd3+ moments in this frustrated magnetic system. Negligible thermal and magnetic hysteresis suggest a second-order feature of phase transition and a reversible magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in GdInO3 compound. In the mag…
The formation of a skyrmion crystal and its phase transition are studied taking into account the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction at the interface between a ferroelectric layer and a magnetic layer in a superlattice. The frustration is introduced in both magnetic and ferroelectric films. The films have the simple cubic lattice structure. Spins inside magnetic layers are Heisenberg spins interacting with each other via nearest-neighbor (NN) exchange $J^m$ and next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) exchange $J^{2m}$. Polarizations in the ferroelectric layers are assumed to be of Ising type with NN an…
Materials with strong magnetoresistive responses are the backbone of spintronic technology, magnetic sensors, and hard drives. Among them, manganese oxides with a mixed valence and a cubic perovskite structure stand out due to their colossal magnetoresistance (CMR). A double exchange interaction underlies the CMR in manganates, whereby charge transport is enhanced when the spins on neighboring Mn3+ and Mn4+ ions are parallel. Prior efforts to find different materials or mechanisms for CMR resulted in a much smaller effect. Here we show an enormous CMR at low temperatures in EuCd2P2 without man…
Double magnetic transition, complex field-induced phases, and large magnetocaloric effect in the frustrated garnet compound Mn$_{3}$Cr$_{2}$Ge$_{3}$O$_{12}$
A dense phase of a post-layered perovskite Sr3Co2O6 was created by a high-pressure and high-temperature synthetic route and quenched to ambient conditions. The structure of Sr3Co2O6 was determined by synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction. Sr3Co2O6 crystallizes in the K4CdCl6-type structure (an infinite chain-type structure), which is 6% denser than the known, iso-compositional layered perovskite Sr3Co2O7-d (d~1). The K4CdCl6-type Sr3Co2O6 shows complex magnetic behavior reflecting the spin-chain nature as well as the analogue oxides Ca3Co2O6 and Ca3CoRhO6, whose microscopic magnetic origin is s…
We report synchrotron radiation diffraction and muon spin rotation (muSR) measurements on the frustrated pyrochlore magnet Tb2Ti2O7. The powder diffraction study of a crushed crystal fragment does not reveal any structural change down to 4 K. The muSR measurements performed at 20 mK on a mosaic of single crystals with an external magnetic field applied along a three-fold axis are consistent with published a.c. magnetic-susceptibility measurements at 16 mK. While an inflection point could be present around an internal field intensity slightly above 0.3 T, the data barely support the presence of…
Recently, the mixed transition metal oxides of the form Li(Ni1-y-zCoyMnz)O2, have become the center of attention as promising candidates for novel battery material. These materials have also revealed very interesting magnetic properties due to the alternate stacking of planes of metal oxides on a 2D triangular lattice and the Li-layers. The title compound, Li(Ni0.8Co0.1Mn0.1)O2, has been investigated by both magnetometry and measurements and μ+SR. We find the evolution of localized magnetic moments with decreasing temperature below 70 K. The magnetic ground state (T = 2 K) is, however, shown t…
The transmission electron microscopy observations of the charge ordering (CO) which governs the electronic polarization in LuFe2O4-x clearly show the presence of a remarkable phase separation at low temperatures. Two CO ground states are found to adopt the charge modulations of Q1 = (1/3, 1/3, 0) and Q2 = (1/3 + y, 1/3 + y, 3/2), respectively. Our structural study demonstrates that the incommensurately Q2-modulated state is chiefly stable in samples with relatively lower oxygen contents. Data from theoretical simulations of the diffraction suggest that both Q1- and Q2-modulated phases have fer…
Strong geometrical frustration in magnets leads to exotic states, such as spin liquids, spin supersolids and complex magnetic textures. SrCu2(BO3)2, a spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet in the archetypical Shastry-Sutherland lattice, exhibits a rich spectrum of magnetization plateaus and stripe-like magnetic textures in applied fields. The structure of these plateaus is still highly controversial due to the intrinsic complexity associated with frustration and competing length scales. We reveal new magnetic textures in SrCu2(BO3)2 via magnetostriction and magnetocaloric measurements in fields …
We have investigated the magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of EuHo$_2$O$_4$ and EuDy$_2$O$_4$ by magnetization and heat capacity measurements down to 2 K. These compounds undergo a field-induced antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic transition and exhibit a huge entropy change. For a field change of 0-8 T, the maximum magnetic entropy and adiabatic temperature changes are 30 (25) J kg$^{-1}$ K$^{-1}$ and 12.7 (16) K, respectively and the corresponding value of refrigerant capacity is 540 (415) J kg$^{-1}$ for EuHo$_2$O$_4$ (EuDy$_2$O$_4$). These magnetocaloric parameters also remain large do…
Low-temperature magnetization curves and thermodynamics of a frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg triangular bilayer with the antiferromagnetic intradimer interaction and either ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic interdimer interaction are investigated in a highly frustrated parameter region, where localized many-magnon eigenstates provide the most dominant contribution to magnetothermodynamics. Low-energy states of the highly frustrated spin-1/2 Heisenberg triangular bilayer can be accordingly found from a mapping correspondence with an effective triangular-lattice spin-1/2 Ising model in a field. …
The $J_1$-$J_2$ quantum spin sawtooth chain is a paradigmatic one-dimensional frustrated quantum spin system exhibiting unconventional ground-state and finite-temperature properties. In particular, it exhibits a flat energy band of one-magnon excitations accompanied by an enhanced magnetocaloric effect for two singular ratios of the basal interactions $J_1$ and the zigzag interactions $J_2$. In our paper, we demonstrate that one can drive the spin system into a flat-band scenario by applying an appropriate electric field, thus overcoming the restriction of fine-tuned exchange couplings $J_1$ a…
Magneto-acoustic investigations of the frustrated triangular-lattice antiferromagnet Cs2CuCl4 were performed for the longitudinal modes c11 and c33 in magnetic fields along the a-axis. The temperature dependence of the sound velocity at zero field shows a mild softening at low temperature and displays a small kink-like anomaly at TN. Isothermal measurements at T < TN of the sound attenuation reveal two closely-spaced features of different character on approaching the materials quantum-critical point (QCP) around Bs = 8.5 T for B // a. The peak at slightly lower fields remains sharp down to the…
We present a theoretical analysis of the magnetocaloric effect in the frustrated antiferromagnet \Eu. Monte Carlo simulations indicate a large magnetic entropy change $ΔS_M^{\text{max}} \sim 5.14$ J kg$^{-1}$K$^{-1}$ at $T=2.45$K for a moderate change in the external magnetic field $ΔB=1.2$ Tesla. The highest value of $ΔS_M$ seems to be associated with the presence of a multicritical point in the magnetic field versus temperature phase diagram (at $B_m\sim 1.2$ Tesla and $T_m\sim 2.2$ K) but it persists with similar large values for a broad range of temperatures $T\lesssim T_m$. Single crystal…
We study the magnetic excitations on top of the plateaux states recently discovered in spin-Peierls systems in a magnetic field. We show by means of extensive density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) computations and an analytic approach that one single spin-flip on top of $M=1-\frac2N$ ($N=3,4,...$) plateau decays into $N$ elementary excitations each carrying a fraction $\frac1N$ of the spin. This fractionalization goes beyond the well-known decay of one magnon into two spinons taking place on top of the M=0 plateau. Concentrating on the $\frac13$ plateau (N=3) we unravel the microscopic s…
Frustrated magnets with a strong spin-lattice coupling can show rich magnetic phases and the associated fascinating phenomena. A promising platform is the breathing pyrochlore magnet CuInCr$_{4}$S$_{8}$ with localized $S=3/2$ Cr$^{3+}$ ions, which is proposed to be effectively viewed as an $S=6$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the face-centered-cubic lattice. Here, we unveil that CuInCr$_{4}$S$_{8}$ exhibits a complex magnetic phase diagram with a small phase pocket ($A$ phase) by means of magnetization, magnetostriction, magnetocapacitance, and magnetocaloric-effect measurements in pulsed high …
We investigate the low temperature magnetic field dependences of both the resistivity and the magnetization in the misfit cobaltate Ca3Co4O9 from 60 K down to 2 K. The measured negative magnetoresistance reveals a scaling behavior with the magnetization which demonstrates a spin dependent diffusion mechanism. This scaling is also found to be consistent with a shadowed metalliclike conduction over the whole temperature range. By explaining the observed transport crossover, this result shed a new light on the nature of the elementary excitations relevant to the transport.
The effect of incoherent interlayer transport on the interlayer resistance of a layered metal is considered. We find that for both quasi-one-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional Fermi liquids the angular dependence of the magnetoresistance is essentially the same for coherent and incoherent transport. Consequently, the existence of a three-dimensional Fermi surface is not necessary to explain the oscillations in the magnetoresistance that are seen in many organic conductors as the field direction is varied.
Studies of interlayer transport in layered metals have generally made use of zero temperature conductivity expressions to analyze angle-dependent magnetoresistance oscillations (AMRO). However, recent high temperature AMRO experiments have been performed in a regime where the inclusion of finite temperature effects may be required for a quantitative description of the resistivity. We calculate the interlayer conductivity in a layered metal with anisotropic Fermi surface properties allowing for finite temperature effects. We find that resistance maxima are modified by thermal effects much more …
We report the temperature $T$ and magnetic field $H$ dependence of the thermopower $S$ of an itinerant triangular antiferromagnet PdCrO$_2$ in high magnetic fields up to 32 T. In the paramagnetic phase, the zero-field thermopower is positive with a value typical of good metals with a high carrier density. In marked contrast to typical metals, however, $S$ decreases rapidly with increasing magnetic field, approaching zero at the maximum field scale for $T >$ 70 K. We argue here that this profound change in the thermoelectric response derives from the strong interaction of the 4$d$ correlated el…
We theoretically investigate the magnetotransport of Dirac fermions coupled with localized moments to understand the physical properties of the Dirac material EuMnBi$_2$. Using an interlayer hopping form, which simplifies the complicated interaction between the layers of Dirac fermions and the layers of magnetic moments in EuMnBi$_2$, the theory reproduces most of the features observed in this system. The hysteresis observed in EuMnBi$_2$ can be caused by the valley splitting that is induced by the spin-orbit coupling and the external magnetic field with the molecular field created by localize…
Two-dimensional magnetic materials have recently attracted great interest due to their unique functions as the electric field control of a magnetic phase and the anomalous spin Hall effect. For such remarkable functions, a spin-orbit coupling (SOC) serves as an essential ingredient. Here we report a giant positive magnetoresistance in a layered magnetic semiconductor AgCrSe2, which is a manifestation of the subtle combination of the SOC and Zeeman-type spin splitting. When the carrier concentration approaches the critical value of 2.5\times10^18 cm^-3, a sizable positive magnetoresistance of ~…
Properties of two ThCr2Si2-type materials are discussed within the context of their established structural and magnetic symmetries. Both materials develop collinear, G-type antiferromagnetic order above room temperature, and magnetic ions occupy acentric sites in centrosymmetric structures. We refute a previous conjecture that BaMn2As2 is an example of a magnetoelectric material with hexadecapole order by exposing flaws in supporting arguments, principally, an omission of discrete symmetries enforced by the symmetry of sites used by Mn ions and, also, improper classifications of the primary an…
An external magnetic field induces large relative changes in the entropy of one-dimensional quantum spin systems at finite temperatures. This leads to a magnetocaloric effect, i.e. a change in temperature during an adiabatic (de)magnetization process. Several examples of one-dimensional spin-1/2 models are studied by employing the Jordan-Wigner transformation and exact diagonalization. During an adiabatic (de)magnetization process temperature drops in the vicinity of a field-induced zero-temperature quantum phase transition. Comparing different levels of frustration, we find that more frustrat…
The magnetocaloric effect is studied at the transition to saturation in the antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the simplest two-dimensional lattices, namely the square and the triangular lattice. Numerical results are presented for the entropy which are consistent with identical universal properties. However, the absolute values of the entropy are bigger on the geometrically frustrated triangular lattice than on the non-frustrated square lattice, indicating that frustration improves the magnetocaloric properties.