Abstract
We investigate the spin-glass transition in the strongly frustrated well-known compound Fe2TiO5. A remarkable feature of this transition, widely discussed in the literature, is its anisotropic properties: The transition manifests itself in the magnetic susceptibly only along one axis, despite Fe3+ d5 spins having no orbital component. We demonstrate, using neutron scattering, that below the transition temperature Tg=55 K, Fe2TiO5 develops nanoscale surfboard-shaped antiferromagnetic regions in which the Fe3+ spins are aligned perpendicular to the axis which exhibits freezing. We show that the glass transition may result from the freezing of transverse fluctuations of the magnetization of these regions and we develop a mean-field replica theory of such a transition, revealing a type of magnetic van der Waals effect.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | L220104 |
| Journal | Physical Review B |
| Volume | 103 |
| Issue number | 22 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 1 2021 |
Funding
We acknowledge useful discussions with A. P. Young, W. P. Wolf, D. Huse, and G. Aeppli. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Grants No. DE-SC0017862 (P.G.L and A.P.R.) and No. DE-SC0008832 (T.B. and T.S.). Work by Y.X., T.B. and T.S. was carried out in part at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF-1644779 and the State of Florida. Work at Argonne (S.R. and D.P., neutron scattering and high-temperature susceptibility measurements) was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Science, Materials Science and Engineering Division. Use of the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL was sponsored by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. DOE.