Experimental verification of the significance of trigonal coupling for the 1/4 lock-in in holmium

In the region between 20 and 132K, holmium is in a spiral anti-ferromagnetic phase, with the wave vector, tau , of the spiral increasing from 0.16 to 0.28 reciprocal lattice units. Near simple values of tau (such as 1/4, which occurs near 100K), a magnetic field can cause a "lock-in", wher...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physica. B, Condensed matter Condensed matter, 1997-12, Vol.241-243, p.699-701
Main Authors: Tindall, D A, Small, M J, Steinitz, M O, Tun, Z
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In the region between 20 and 132K, holmium is in a spiral anti-ferromagnetic phase, with the wave vector, tau , of the spiral increasing from 0.16 to 0.28 reciprocal lattice units. Near simple values of tau (such as 1/4, which occurs near 100K), a magnetic field can cause a "lock-in", where the variation of tau with temperature is arrested over a small temperature range. Recently, Jensen [Phys. Rev. B 54 (1996) 4021] predicted that the temperature width of this lock-in should be very strongly dependent on the magnetic field orientation in the plane containing the c- and b-axis. We have used the N5 triple-axis spectrometer at the NRU reactor, Chalk River, to measure the temperature width of the tau = 1/4 lock-in in holmium as a function of the orientation of a 2.6 T magnetic field applied in the (c-b) plane: Our results are substantially in agreement with Jensen's prediction.
ISSN:0921-4526
DOI:10.1016/S0921-4526(98)80044-6