2017/09/30 by Viviane Pecanha-Antonio, Viviane Peçanha-Antonio, Erxi Feng +10 · 20 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Atomic physics #Condensed matter physics #Diffraction #Ground state #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Inelastic neutron scattering #Inelastic scattering #Neutron diffraction #Nuclear materials and radiation effects #Optics #Paramagnetism #Phase (matter) #Phase transition #Physics #Pyrochlore #Quantum mechanics #Scattering #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.96.214415
published in Physical review. B./Physical review. B 96(21) (American Physical Society) · 11 pages, 9 figures, Phys. Rev. B. (accepted)
openalex created_date 2017/09/15 · arxiv created 2017/12/01 · openalex publication_date 2017/12/11 · arxiv updated 2017/12/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report an extensive study on the zero field ground state of a powder sample of the pyrochlore Yb2Ti2O7. A sharp heat capacity anomaly that labels a low temperature phase transition in this material is observed at 280 mK. Neutron diffraction shows that a quasicollinear ferromagnetic order develops below Tc with a magnetic moment of 0.87(2)\ensuremathμB. High resolution inelastic neutron scattering measurements show, below the phase transition temperature, sharp gapped low-lying magnetic excitations coexisting with a remnant quasielastic contribution likely associated with persistent spin fluctuations. Moreover, a broad inelastic continuum of excitations at \ensuremath∼0.6 meV is observed from the lowest measured temperature up to at least 2.5 K. At 10 K, the continuum has vanished and a broad quasielastic conventional paramagnetic scattering takes place at the observed energy range. Finally, we show that the exchange parameters obtained within the framework of linear spin-wave theory do not accurately describe the observed zero field inelastic neutron scattering data.