Spiral-cycloidal-spin structure in the plane and field-induced metamagnetic transitions in coupled orbital/charge-ordered CaSm manganite
Phys. Rev. Materials 10, 104419 – Published 23 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q16q-5dv8
Abstract
We report the anomalous characteristics of magnetostructural phases in the vicinity of the orbital/charge-ordered state () below the antiferromagnetic (AFM) Néel temperature () of the correlated electron system by means of neutron diffraction, field-dependent heat-capacity, and magnetometry studies. Our neutron diffraction study reveals an apparent coexistence of two commensurate magnetic phases with the propagation vectors and forming probably a phase, with close to 1/4, indicating that the magnetic unit cell coincides with the enlarged superstructure of dimensions . It was found that the moments of both magnetic phases are AFM-coupled along all directions forming an - or a -type ordering, where the magnetic moments of the - and -type phases are aligned within the plane and along the axis, respectively. In the noncollinear magnetic structure, the -type phase can be described with the irreducible representations of and , where the Mn moments are oriented parallel to the directions [110] and . Moreover, phenomena such as field-induced metamagnetic transitions ( at 3 K), critical behavior of specific heat (), negative exchange bias effect (), and a zero-crossover of magnetic entropy change () are newly observed in this unique composition.