Nematic ordering in pyrochlore antiferromagnets: high-field phase of chromium spinel oxides

2015/10/08 by Emika Takata, Tsutomu Momoi, Takata, Emika +3 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Multiferroics and related materials #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.02373

openalex publication_date 2015/10/08 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Motivated by recent observation of a new high field phase near saturation in chromium spinels ACr₂O₄ (A= Zn, Cd, Hg), we study the S = 3/2 pyrochlore Heisenberg antiferromagnet with biquadratic interactions. Magnon instability analysis at the saturation field reveals that a very small biquadratic interaction can induce magnon pairing in pyrochlore antiferromagnets, which leads to the emergence of a ferro-quadrupolar phase, or equivalently a spin nematic phase, below the saturation field. We present the magnetic phase diagram in an applied field, studying both S=3/2 and S=1 spin systems. The relevance of our result to chromium spinels is discussed.

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• Unified description of spin-lattice coupling: application to thermodynamic properties of the pyrochlore Heisenberg antiferromagnet

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