Up to now the crystallographic structure of the magnetoelectric perovskite EuTiO3 was considered to remain cubic down to low temperature. Here we present high resolution synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction data showing the existence of a structural phase transition, from cubic Pm-3m to tetragonal I4/mcm, involving TiO6 octahedra tilting, in analogy to the case of SrTiO3. The temperature evolution of the tilting angle indicates a second-order phase transition with an estimated Tc=235K. This critical temperature is well below the recent anomaly reported by specific heat measurement at TA\sim282K. By performing atomic pair distribution function analysis on diffraction data we provide evidence of a mismatch between the local (short-range) and the average crystallographic structures in this material. Below the estimated Tc, the average model symmetry is fully compatible with the local environment distortion but the former is characterized by a reduced value of the tilting angle compared to the latter. At T=240K data show the presence of local octahedra tilting identical to the low temperature one, while the average crystallographic structure remains cubic. On this basis, we propose intrinsic lattice disorder to be of fundamental importance in the understanding of EuTiO3 properties.
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…
In the past years, magnetism-driven ferroelectricity and gigantic magnetoelectric effects have been reported for a number of frustrated magnets with spiral magnetic orders. Such materials are of high current interest due to their potential for spintronics and low-power magnetoelectric devices. However, their low magnetic order temperatures (typically <100K) greatly restrict their fields of application. Here we demonstrate that the stability domain of the spiral phase in the perovskite YBaCuFeO5 can be enlarged by more than 150K through a controlled manipulation of the Fe/Cu chemical disorder. …
Magnetization can be induced by an electric field in systems without inversion symmetry $\mathcal{P}$ and time-reversal symmetry $\mathcal{T}$. This phenomenon is called the magnetoelectric (ME) effect. The spin ME effect has been actively studied in multiferroics. The orbital ME effect also exists and has been mainly discussed in topological insulators at zero temperature. In this paper, we study the intrinsic orbital ME response in metals at finite temperature using the Kubo formula. The intrinsic response originates from the Fermi sea and does not depend on the dissipation. Especially in sy…
In honor of Igor Dzyaloshinskii on his 90th birthday, we revisit his pioneering work on the linear magnetoelectric effect in light of the modern theory of ferroelectric polarization. We show that the surface magnetic dipole moment associated with magnetoelectric materials is analogous to the bound surface charge in ferroelectrics, in that it can be conveniently described in terms of a bulk magnetoelectric multipolization that is analogous to the ferroelectric polarization. We define the intrinsic surface magnetization to be this surface magnetic dipole moment per unit area, and provide a conve…
Pb(Fe$_{0.5}$Nb$_{0.5}$)O$_3$ (PFN), one of the few relaxor multiferroic systems, has a $G$-type antiferromagnetic transition at $T_N$ = 143 K and a ferroelectric transition at $T_C$ = 385 K. By using high-resolution neutron-diffraction experiments and a total scattering technique, we paint a comprehensive picture of the long- and short-range structures of PFN: (i) a clear sign of short-range structural correlation above $T_C$, (ii) no sign of the negative thermal expansion behavior reported in a previous study, and (iii) clearest evidence thus far of magnetoelectric coupling below $T_N$. We c…
The Magnetoelectric (ME) effect in solids is a prominent cross correlation phenomenon, in which the electric field (${\bm E}$) controls the magnetization (${\bm M}$) and the magnetic field (${\bm H}$) controls the electric polarization (${\bm P}$). A rich variety of ME effects and their potential in practical applications have been investigated so far within the transition-metal compounds. Here, we report a possible way to realize the ME effect in organic molecular solids, in which two molecules build a dimer unit aligned on a lattice site. The linear ME effect is predicted in a long-range ord…
An effective model is developed to explain the phase diagram and the mechanism of magnetoelectric coupling in multiferroics, $RMn_2O_5$. We show that the nature of magnetoelectric coupling in $RMn_2O_5$ is a coupling between two Ising-type orders, namely, the ferroelectric order in the b axis, and the coupled magnetic order between two frustrated antiferromagnetic chains. The frustrated magnetic structure drives the system to a commensurate-incommensurate phase transition, which can be understood as a competition between a collinear or col-plane order stemming from the `order by disorder' mech…
Magnetization, magnetoresistance, and magnetodielectric measurements have been carried out on the half doped charge ordered manganite, Pr_0.5Ca_0.5MnO_3. The low temperature state is found to be strongly dependent on the oxygen stoichiometry whereas the high temperature state remains almost unaltered. A disorder driven phase separation in the low temperature state is noticed in the magnetic, magnetoresistance, and dielectric measurements which is attributed to the oxygen deficiency in the compound. A considerable magnetodielectric (MD) effect is noticed close to room temperature at 280 K which…
We have developed a sensitive technique to probe the magnetic skyrmion phases and dynamics by employing the interfacial coupling effect in a magnetoelectric composite configuration. The study on a MnSi single crystal sample using this technique provides clear evidences for the skyrmion lattice phase and coexistence of skyrmion and conical phase. Above the Curie temperature TC, a region with strong spin fluctuation is revealed as well. By tuning the density of Skyrmion or disorder, a transition from the skyrmion lattice to skyrmion-conical coexisting phase is observed. The observation is in goo…
Magnetoelectric effect of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg-Ising ladder in a presence of the external electric and magnetic fields is rigorously examined by taking into account Katsura-Nagaosa-Balatsky mechanism. It is shown that the applied electric field may control a quantum phase transition between the Néel (stripy) ordered phase and the disordered paramagnetic phase. The staggered magnetization vanishes according to a power law with the Ising-type critical exponent 1/8, the electric polarization exhibits a weak singularity and the dielectric susceptibility shows a logarithmic divergence at this pa…
Multiferroics with the coexistence of ferroelectric and ferromagnetic orders are ideal candidates for magnetoelectric applications. Unfortunately, only very few ferroelectric-ferromagnetic multiferroics (with low magnetic critical temperature) were discovered. Here we perform first principles calculations to investigate the effects of the epitaxial strain on the properties of BiMnO3 films grown along the pseudocubic [001] direction. Unlike the ground state with the centrosymmetric C2/c space group in bulk, we reveal that the tensile epitaxial strain stabilizes the ferromagnetic and ferroelectr…
For disordered Heisenberg systems with small single ion anisotropy, two spin glass transitions below the long range ordered phase transition temperature has been predicted theoretically for compositions close to the percolation threshold. Experimental verification of these predictions is still controversial for conventional spin glasses. We show that multiferroic spin glass systems can provide a unique platform for verifying these theoretical predictions via a study of change in magnetoelastic and magnetoelectric couplings, obtained from an analysis of diffraction data, at the spin glass trans…
We report a detailed single crystal investigation of a magnetoelectric ferrimagnet Cu2OSeO3 using dc magnetization and ac susceptibility along the three principal directions [100], [110] and [111]. We have observed that in small magnetic fields two magnetic transitions occur, one at Tc = 57 K and the second one at TN = 58 K. At Tc the non-linear susceptibility reveals the emergence of the ferromagnetic component and below Tc the magnetization measurements show the splitting between field-cooled and zero-field-cooled regimes. Above 1000 Oe the magnetization saturates and the system is in a sing…
The intrinsic noncollinear spin patterns in rare-earth pyrochlore are physically interesting, hosting many emergent properties, e.g. spin ice and monopole-type excitation. Recently, the magnetic monopole excitation of spin ice systems was predicted to be magnetoelectric active, while rare experimental works have directly confirmed this scenario. In this work, we performed systematic experimental investigation on the magnetoelectricity of Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ by probing the ferroelectricity, spin dynamics, and dielectric behaviors. Two ferroelectric transitions at $T_{c1}$=25 K and $T_{c2}$=13 K h…
Intrinsic magnetic topological insulators from MnBi2Te4 family promise realization of axion insulator, a theoretically predicted state of matter capable to mutually convert electric and magnetic signals, and whose properties are reminiscent of cosmological axion dark matter. Here we report the first experimental realization of room-temperature axionic single-spin switch in topological metamaterial MnBi2Te3. The metamaterial was in situ created in the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiment by removing Te atomic layer from MnBi2Te4 surface using STM tip. Room temperature STM study of MnB…
We discuss the effects of a novel polaronic disorder in the recently proposed two-fluid model for manganites. Using effective field theory as well as direct numerical simulations, we show that this disorder can have dramatic effects in terms of the transition from ferromagnetic insulator to ferromagnetic metal upon hole-doping, including an Anderson localized regime where variable range hopping may be observed.
The magnetic properties of single-crystal EuTiO3 are suggestive of nanoscale disorder below its cubic-tetragonal phase transition. We demonstrate that electric field cooling acts to restore monocrystallinity, thus confirming that emergent structural disorder is an intrinsic low-temperature property of this material. Using torque magnetometry, we deduce that tetragonal EuTiO3 enters an easy-axis antiferromagnetic phase at 5.6 K, with a first-order transition to an easy-plane ground state below 3 K. Our data is reproduced by a 3D anisotropic Heisenberg spin model.
Crystal-Field--Driven Magnetoelectric Coupling in the Non-Kramers Hexaaluminate PrMgAl11O19
Charles University（查理大学）；Adam Mickiewicz University（亚当·密茨凯维奇大学）；Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences（捷克科学院物理研究所）；Institute of Molecular Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院分子物理研究所）
The orbital order-disorder transition temperature (T_OO) versus tolerance factor (t) plot switches from monotonic to non-monotonic beyond a doping level (x) ~ 10 atom% in a family of R(1-x)A(x)MnO3 systems(R = La, Pr, Nd; A = Ca, Sr; x = 0.0-0.2). T_OO reaches maximum at a 'doping-dependent' critical tolerance factor t_C(x) (for 0.1<x<0.2)at which the orthorhombic distortion (D) also maximizes. Such an observation reflects influence of charge carriers on both 'intrinsic' octahedral-site distortion and its bias on the orbital order in doped perovskite manganites and, thus, deviation from what h…
We report a reliable method to estimate the disorder broadening parameter from the scaling of the gaps of the even and major odd denominator fractional quantum Hall states of the second Landau level. We apply this technique to several samples of vastly different densities and grown in different MBE chambers. Excellent agreement is found between the estimated intrinsic and numerically obtained energy gaps for the $ν=5/2$ fractional quantum Hall state. Futhermore, we quantify, for the first time, the dependence of the intrinsic gap at $ν=5/2$ on Landau level mixing.
In superconducting films, the role of intrinsic disorder is typically to compete with superconductivity by fragmenting the global phase coherence and lowering the superfluid density. Nonetheless, when a transverse magnetic field is applied to the system and an Abrikosov vortex lattice forms, the presence of disorder can actually strengthen the superconducting state against thermal fluctuations. By means of Monte Carlo simulations on the uniformly frustrated XY model in two dimensions, we show that while for weak pinning the superconducting critical temperature $T_c$ increases with the applied …
The pumping conductance of a disordered two-dimensional Chern insulator scales with increasing size and fixed disorder strength to sharp plateau transitions at well-defined energies between ordinary and quantum Hall insulators. When the disorder strength is scaled to zero as system size increases, the "metallic" regime of fluctuating Chern numbers can extend over the whole band. A simple argument leads to a sort of weighted equipartition of Chern number over minibands in a finite system with periodic boundary conditions: even though there must be strong fluctuations between disorder realizatio…
