2001/08/29 by Oleg Tchernyshyov, O. Tchernyshyov, Roderich Moessner +2 · 33 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Multiferroics and related materials #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.88.067203
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 067203 (2002) · 5 pages, 5 inline figures
arxiv created 2001/08/29 · openalex publication_date 2002/01/28 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the effects of magnetoelastic couplings on pyrochlore antiferromagnets. We employ Landau theory, extending an investigation begun by Yamashita and Ueda for the case of S = 1, and classical analyses to argue that such couplings generate bond order via a spin-Peierls transition. This is followed by, or concurrent with, a transition into one of several possible low-temperature Néel phases, with most simply collinear, but also coplanar or mixed spin patterns. In a collinear Néel phase, a dispersionless stringlike magnon mode dominates the resulting excitation spectrum, providing a distinctive signature of the parent geometrically frustrated state. We comment on the experimental situation.