Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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KR: Fachgruppe Kristallographie

KR 7: Joint Session "Soft X-ray Resonant Scattering for Complex Structural and Magnetic Investigations" (MA jointly with KR), Organization: Eberhard Goering (MPI-IS Stuttgart)

KR 7.5: Topical Talk

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 11:45–12:15, BH 243

Cycloidal Magnetic Order and Ferroelectricity: Manipulation and Imaging with Soft X-Rays — •Eugen Weschke¹, Enrico Schierle¹, Victor Soltwisch¹, Detlef Schmitz¹, Andrej Maljuk^1,2, and Dimitri Argyriou^1,3 — ¹Institut für komplexe magnetische Materialien, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Germany — ²Institut für Festkörperforschung, IFW Dresden, Germany — ³European Spallation Source, Lund, Sweden

Materials with coupled order parameters, such as the magnetoelectric rare-earth manganites, offer interesting means of manipulation, like switching of magnetic order by electric fields. Ordering phenomena in these complex materials can be nicely studied by resonant scattering due to the element-selectivity of the method. In the soft x-ray region, in particular, spatial correlations involving the 3d and 4f electrons and their magnetic moments are directly addressed via dipole transitions. The method is applied to study cycloidal magnetic structures that occur in connection with ferroelectric order in DyMnO₃ and GdMnO₃, using circularly polarized synchrotron radiation to address the handedness of the structure [1]. The possibility to manipulate ferroelectric domains with the synchrotron beam is also demonstrated, which eventually provides a means to evidence ferroelectric polarization in cases where other methods are not conclusive or difficult to apply.

[1] E. Schierle et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 167207 (2010).