Nanowerk July 4, 2022
An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, Sweden) observed an unusual magnetic transition in elemental neodymium where, with increasing temperature, long-range multiply periodic ‘multi-Q’ magnetic order emerged from a self-induced spin glass. They characterized the local order of a previously reported spin glass phase and quantified the emergence of long-range multi-Q order with increasing temperature. Using the analysis tools they developed, they determined the glass transition temperature from measurements of the spatially dependent magnetization. They compared these observations with atomistic spin dynamics simulations to reproduce the qualitative observation of a phase transition from a low-temperature spin glass phase to an intermediate ordered multi-Q phase. These simulations trace the origin of the unexpected high-temperature order in weakened frustration driven by temperature-dependent sublattice correlations. According to the researchers their work provides a platform to study the magnetization dynamics of a self-induced spin glass…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Spin-Q glass state of Nd(0001) at 5 K. Credit: Nature Physics (2022)