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Neutron scattering study of magnetic anisotropy in the tetragonal antiferromagnet Bi2CuO4

Journal Article · · Physical Review B
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)
  2. National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD (United States). Center for Neutron Research
  3. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  4. McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON (Canada)
+ Show Author Affiliations
In this work, we present a comprehensive study of magnon excitations in the tetragonal easy-plane antiferromagnet Bi2CuO4 using inelastic neutron scattering and spin-wave analyses. The nature of low-energy magnons, and hence the anisotropy in this material, has been controversial. We show unambiguously that the low-energy magnon spectrum consists of a gapped and a gapless mode, which we attribute to out-of-plane and in-plane spin fluctuations, respectively. We modeled the observed magnon spectrum using linear spin-wave analysis of a minimal anisotropic spin model motivated by the lattice symmetry. By studying the magnetic field dependence of the (1,0,0) Bragg peak intensity and the in-plane magnon intensity, we observed a spin-flop transition in the ab plane at ~0.4 T, which directly indicates the existence of a small in-plane anisotropy that is classically forbidden. It is only by taking into account magnon zero-point fluctuations beyond the linear spin-wave approximation that we could explain this in-plane anisotropy and its magnitude, the latter of which is deduced from the critical field of the spin-flop transition. The microscopic origins of the observed anisotropic interactions are also discussed. We found that our data are inconsistent with a large Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, which suggests a potential departure of Bi2CuO4 from the conventional theories of magnetic anisotropy for other cuprates.
Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1797633
Journal Information:
Physical Review B, Journal Name: Physical Review B Journal Issue: 13 Vol. 103; ISSN 2469-9950
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
cuprates
exchange interaction
magnetic anisotropy
magnons
neutron scattering