Abstract
In this work, we explore experimentally and theoretically the spectrum of magnetic excitations of the Fe3+ and Yb3+ ions in ytterbium iron garnet (Yb3Fe5O12). We present a complete description of the crystal-field splitting of the 4f states of Yb3+, including the effect of the exchange field generated by the magnetically ordered Fe subsystem. We also consider a further effect of the Fe-Yb exchange interaction, which is to hybridize the Yb crystal field excitations with the Fe spin-wave modes at positions in the Brillouin zone where the two types of excitations cross. We present detailed measurements of these hybridized excitations, and we propose a framework that can be used in the quantitative analysis of the coupled spectra in terms of the anisotropic 4f-3d exchange interaction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 104422 |
| Journal | Physical Review B |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 1 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
We would like to thank Paolo G. Radaelli for fruitful discussions. We would also like to thank the authors of Ref. for making their data available, and S. J. Cassidy for assistance with the MPMS measurements. This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grants No. EP/M020517/1, No. EP/T027991/1, and No. EP/R042594/1). Experiments at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source were supported by a beam-time allocation from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The raw data collected in this work is available from and .