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KFM: Fachverband Kristalline Festkörper und deren Mikrostruktur

KFM 15: Multiferroics and Magnetoelectric Coupling (joint session MA/KFM)

KFM 15.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 15:15–15:30, EB 407

Asymmetry of the magnetic-field-driven phase transition in h-ErMnO₃ — •Lea Forster¹, Ipek Efe¹, Morgan Trassin¹, Manfred Fiebig¹, Thomas Lottermoser¹, and Mads C. Weber² — ¹Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland — ²IMMM UMR 6283, University Le Mans, France

We report on the asymmetry of the magnetic-field-induced phase transition of the Mn³⁺ order in hexagonal ErMnO₃ under magnetic field application along the six-fold axis. Below the Néel temperature, we observe that with increasing magnetic field the Mn³⁺ and Er³⁺ appear to reorder simultaneously. However, with decreasing magnetic field, the reverse phase transition of the Mn³⁺ shows an intermediate stage where the spins are partially in the zero-field and partially in the applied-field state, while the Er³⁺ reverses almost instantaneously to its zero-field state. This asymmetry of the forward and reverse transition in the Mn³⁺ order becomes more and more pronounced at lower temperatures. We gain access to both the Mn³⁺ and Er³⁺ sublattices using optical second-harmonic generation and SQUID magnetometry. Our investigation of this asymmetric magnetic field-induced phase transition further underlines the complex coupling mechanisms of the Mn³⁺ order to the rare-earth orders in hexagonal manganites.

Keywords: multiferroic; antiferromagnetism; rare-earth magnetism; hexagonal manganites