2006/06/30 by Gia-Wei Chern, Craig J. Fennie, C. J. Fennie +2 · 3 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Multiferroics and related materials #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.74.060405
published as Phys. Rev. B 74, 060405(R) (2006) · Incremental changes in response to referee reports
arxiv created 2006/07/21 · openalex publication_date 2006/08/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a model describing the lattice distortion and incommensurate magnetic order in the spinel CdCr2O4, a good realization of the Heisenberg ``pyrochlore'' antiferromagnet. The magnetic frustration is relieved through the spin-Peierls distortion of the lattice involving a phonon doublet with odd parity. The distortion stabilizes a collinear magnetic order with the propagation wave vector q=2\ensuremathπ(0,0,1). The lack of inversion symmetry makes the crystal structure chiral. The handedness is transferred to magnetic order by the relativistic spin-orbit coupling: the collinear state is twisted into a long spiral with the spins in the ac plane and q shifted to 2\ensuremathπ(0,\ensuremathδ,1).