Frustrated magnetic cycloidal structure and emergent Potts nematicity in CaMn2P2

Farhan Islam, Thaís V. Trevisan, Thomas Heitmann, Santanu Pakhira, Simon X.M. Riberolles, N. S. Sangeetha, David C. Johnston, Peter P. Orth, David Vaknin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report neutron-diffraction results on single-crystal CaMn2P2 containing corrugated Mn honeycomb layers, and we determine its ground-state magnetic structure. The diffraction patterns consist of prominent (1/6,1/6,L) reciprocal-lattice unit (r.l.u.; L = integer) magnetic Bragg reflections, whose temperature-dependent intensities are consistent with a first-order antiferromagnetic phase transition at the Néel temperature TN=70(1) K. Our analysis of the diffraction patterns reveals an in-plane 6×6 magnetic unit cell with ordered spins that in the principal-axis directions rotate by 60∘ steps between nearest neighbors on each sublattice that forms the honeycomb structure, consistent with the PAc magnetic space group. We find that a few other magnetic subgroup symmetries (PA2/c, PC2/m, PS1¯,PC2,PCm,PS1) of the paramagnetic P3¯m11′ crystal symmetry are consistent with the observed diffraction pattern. We relate our findings to frustrated J1-J2-J3 Heisenberg honeycomb antiferromagnets with single-ion anisotropy and the emergence of Potts nematicity.

Original languageEnglish
Article number054425
JournalPhysical Review B
Volume107
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2023
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering. Ames National Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Iowa State University under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358.

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