Canted Magnetic Ground State of Quarter-Doped Manganites $R_{0.75}$Ca$_{0.25}$MnO$_3$ ($R$ = Y, Tb, Dy, Ho, and Er)

TL;DR

This study investigates the magnetic properties of quarter-doped manganites, revealing a canted antiferromagnetic ground state that acts as a transition phase between ferromagnetic and spin-orthogonal stripe states.

Contribution

It uncovers a novel canted antiferromagnetic ground state in quarter-doped manganites and links it to a transition between known magnetic phases.

Findings

All samples exhibit enhanced ferromagnetism below ~80 K.

A spin glass state appears below ~30 K.

Neutron diffraction shows a short-range ordered canted antiferromagnetic state.

Abstract

Polycrystalline samples of the quarter-doped manganites $R_{0.75}$Ca$_{0.25}$MnO$_3$ ($R$ = Y, Tb, Dy, Ho, and Er) were studied by X-ray diffraction and AC/DC susceptibility measurements. All five samples are orthorhombic and exhibit similar magnetic properties: enhanced ferromagnetism below $T_1$ ($\sim80$ K) and a spin glass (SG) state below $T_{SG}$ ($\sim30$ K). With increasing $R^{3+}$ ionic size, both $T_1$ and $T_{SG}$ generally increase. The single crystal neutron diffraction results on Tb$_{0.75}$Ca$_{0.25}$MnO$_3$ revealed that the SG state is mainly composed of a short-range ordered version of a novel canted (i.e. noncollinear) antiferromagnetic spin state. Furthermore, calculations based on the double exchange model for quarter-doped manganites reveal that this new magnetic phase provides a transition state between the ferromagnetic state and the theoretically predicted spin-orthogonal stripe phase.