Giant shifts of crystal-field excitations in ErFeO3 driven by internal magnetic fields
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Date
2021-09-16
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cornell University
Abstract
Crystal-field excitations in transition-metal oxides where -rare-earth elements locate in the space between the transition-metal-oxide tetrahedra and octahedra, are assumed to be robust with respect to external perturbations such as temperature. Using inelastic neutron-scattering experiments, a giant shift of the energy of the lowest crystal-field excitation of Er3+ (4I15/2) in ErFeO3 from 0.35 meV to 0.75 meV was observed on cooling from 10K to 1.5K through the magnetic ordering temperature of Er3+ at 4.1 K. A crystal-field model was proposed to explain the observed crystal field excitations in this work. The model indicates the lowest-energy crystal-field excitation in ErFeO3 is the first Kramers doublet above the ground state. Its energy substantially shifts by the internal field induced by the ordered Er3+ magnetic moments. Further magnetic-field-dependent measurements provide strong supportive evidence for this scenario. By fitting the external magnetic-field dependency of the crystal-field excitation energy, the internal field generated by Er3+ magnetic moments was derived to be ~0.33meV. The result indicates that the internal field of Er3+ magnetic moments contribute to the energy shift of the crystal-field excitations. The giant energy shift under fields could be attributed to the anisotropy of the large effective g-factor. CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution
Description
Keywords
Crystal field, Transition elements, Oxides, Rare earths, Inelastic scattering, Neutron diffraction, Magnetic moments, Anisotropy
Citation
O'Brien, J., Deng, G., Ma, X., Feng, Z., Ren, W., Cao, S., Yu, D., McIntyre, G. J., & Ulrich, C. (2021). Giant shifts of crystal-field excitations in ErFeO3 driven by internal magnetic fields. arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.07667.