Influence of spin glass-like magnetic relaxation on the zero-field-cooled exchange bias effect

TL;DR

This study investigates how spin glass-like magnetic relaxation influences the zero-field-cooled exchange bias effect in specific compounds, revealing the phase's crucial role through experimental and phenomenological modeling.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the role of spin glass-like phases in ZEB, supported by experimental data and a proposed relaxation-based phenomenological model.

Findings

Spin glass-like phase significantly affects ZEB magnitude.

Magnetic relaxation dynamics correlate with hysteresis asymmetry.

Model confirms the phase's key role in ZEB behavior.

Abstract

The zero-field-cooled exchange bias (ZEB) effect is a remarkable phenomenon recently reported for some reentrant spin glass-like compounds. In this work, the time-evolution of magnetization is thoroughly investigated for two ZEB materials in order to figure out the role played by the spin glass-like phase on such effect. La$_{1.5}$Sr$_{0.5}$CoMnO$_{6}$ and La$_{1.5}$Ca$_{0.5}$CoMnO$_{6}$ were chosen as representative samples of ZEB systems, since the former compound presents the largest ZEB reported so far, while the second has a much smaller effect, despite being structurally/chemically similar. Comprehensive magnetic measurements were carried on both samples, and the results are discussed in terms of the amount and time-evolution of the spin glass-like phase under the influence of a varying field. We also propose a phenomenological model, based on the pinning of spin glass-like moments and on the dynamics of their magnetic relaxation, to explain the asymmetry observed in the hysteresis loops. The good agreement between the simulated and experimental results confirms our hypothesis that the spin glass-like phase is key to the ZEB effect.