2023/08/10 by Elliott Rosenberg, M. Ikeda, Rosenberg, Elliott W. +3
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #FOS: Physical sciences #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Magnetic Properties of Alloys #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.05312
openalex publication_date 2023/08/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Elastocaloric measurements of the ferroquadrupolar/nematic rare-earth intermetallic TmAg2 are presented. TmAg2 undergoes a cooperative Jahn-Teller-like ferroquadrupolar phase transition at 5K, in which the Tm3+ ion's local 4f electronic ground state doublet spontaneously splits and develops an electric quadrupole moment which breaks the rotational symmetry of the tetragonal lattice. The elastocaloric effect, which is the temperature change in the sample induced by adiabatic strains the sample experiences, is sensitive to quadrupolar fluctuations in the paranematic phase which couple to the induced strain. We show that elastocaloric measurements of this material reveal a Curie-Weiss like nematic susceptibility with a Weiss temperature of ≈ 2.7K, in agreement with previous elastic constant measurements. Furthermore, we establish that a magnetic field along the c-axis acts as an effective transverse field for the quadrupole moments.