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Magnetoelastic Dynamics of the Spin Jahn-Teller Transition in CoTi2O5

K. Guratinder1, R. D. Johnson2,3, D. Prabhakaran4, R. A. Taylor4, F. Lang4, S. J. Blundell4, L. S. Taran5, S. V. Streltsov5,6, T. J. Williams7 et al.

S. R. Giblin8, T. Fennell9, K. Schmalzl10, and C. Stock1

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 256702 – Published 25 June, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/sr9s-ll1y

Abstract

CoTi2O5 has the paradox that low temperature static magnetic order is incompatible with the crystal structure owing to a mirror plane that exactly frustrates magnetic interactions. Despite no observable structural distortion with diffraction, CoTi2O5 does magnetically order below TN∼25  K with the breaking of spin ground state degeneracy proposed to be a realization of the spin Jahn-Teller effect in analogy to the celebrated orbital Jahn-Teller transition. We apply neutron and Raman spectroscopy to study the dynamics of this transition in CoTi2O5. We find anomalous acoustics associated with a symmetry breaking strain that characterizes the spin Jahn-Teller transition. Crucially, the energy of this phonon coincides with the energy scale of the magnetic excitations, and has the same symmetry of an optic mode, observed with Raman spectroscopy, which atypically softens in energy with decreasing temperature. Taken together, we propose that the energetics of the spin Jahn-Teller effect in CoTi2O5 are related to cooperative magnetoelastic fluctuations as opposed to conventional soft critical dynamics which typically drive large measurable static displacements.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 256702– Published 25 June, 2025
  • Received 20 October 2024
  • Revised 1 April 2025
  • Accepted 14 May 2025
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