The spin reorientation transition in erbium iron garnet — a neutron and X-ray topographical study

The magnetic and magnetooptical properties of Y-substituted erbium iron garnet single crystals

“…Nevertheless, the spontaneous magnetization along [1 0 0] and [1 1 1] is only slightly different as was shown for rare earth iron garnets where the rare earth (here Er 3+ ) is a Kramers ion [5]. Moreover, below ∼75 K in ErIG, in the rare earth sublattice, when both crystal field effects and exchange Fe 3+ -RE 3+ interaction anisotropies become of the same order of magnitude, the ferrimagnetic order is destroyed and an onset of a noncollinear ordering takes place in the {c} sublattice as shown by neutron diffraction experiments [2,3]. Finally, an anomaly in the magnetic anisotropy near 6 K was observed [6] which was related to the splitting of the lowest Kramers doublet of Er 3+ by the anisotropic exchange interaction with the iron sublattices.…”

“…At low temperature (T < T comp ), ErIG presents anisotropic physical properties which were studied using different techniques, particularly magnetization [2], neutron diffraction [3], and magnetooptical (MO) properties [4]. These different results, sometimes confusing or contradictory partly due to the sensitivity of the anisotropy properties to magnetic and thermal sample history [3], enable one to distinguish between the magnetic and MO Faraday rotation (FR) anisotropy properties performed on the same monocrystalline samples.…”

“…These different results, sometimes confusing or contradictory partly due to the sensitivity of the anisotropy properties to magnetic and thermal sample history [3], enable one to distinguish between the magnetic and MO Faraday rotation (FR) anisotropy properties performed on the same monocrystalline samples. MO results indicate that [1 1 1] is the "easy" axis of ErIG corresponding to the greatest FR absolute values [4].…”

Anisotropic exchange in ErIG

“…Neutron diffraction studies of Hoch et al [24] have refined the magnetic and crystallographic structure and also confirm an easy /0 0 1S direction of magnetization. A transition from the /0 0 1S to the /1 1 1S direction occurs at around 76 K [25]. With the iron magnetization along /0 0 1S, one rare-earth site (site1) has n 2 z ¼ 1 and the other site (site 2) has n 2 z ¼ 0 with n 2 x ¼ n 2 y : In general, the full calculation showed the center of the doublet levels to be shifted relative to the crystal field levels as a result of higher order effects.…”

Synchrotron radiation topographic study of the thick ferromagnetic–fan interface in MnP

“…The behaviour of a first-order magnetic transition within a given crystal is determined both by external parameters like the temperature gradient or the magnetic field, and the competition between several energy terms, notably the magnetostatic, interface and elastic energies. Some of the resulting situations were investigated by neutron and synchrotron radiation (SR) diffraction topography on high quality magnetic single crystals (Tb [1,2], Ho [3,4], MnRhAs [5], ErIG [6], hematite [7][8][9][10], MnP [11][12][13]); for a review see [14,15]). Bragg diffraction imaging techniques are well suited to the investigation of first-order transitions in crystals because these transitions necessarily entail a variation in distortion, which directly affects diffraction.…”