Phys. Rev. B 63, 134433 (2001) [10 pages]Magnetization measurements of antiferromagnetic domains in Sr2Cu3O4Cl2Received 1 November 2000; published 15 March 2001 The Cu3O4 layer in Sr2Cu3O4Cl2 is a variant of the square CuO2 lattice of the high-temperature superconductors, in which the center of every second plaquette contains an extra Cu2+ ion. Whereas the ordering of the spins in the ground-state and the spin-wave excitations of this frustrated spin system are both well understood, we find peculiar behavior resulting from antiferromagnetic domain walls. Pseudodipolar coupling between the two sets of Cu2+ ions results in a ferromagnetic moment, the direction of which reflects the direction of the antiferromagnetic staggered moment, allowing us to probe the antiferromagnetic domain structure. After an excursion to the high fields (>1 T), as the field is lowered, we observe the growth of domains with ferromagnetic moment perpendicular to the field. This gives rise to a finite domain wall susceptibility at small fields, which diverges near 100 K, indicating a phase transition. We also find that the shape of the sample influences the domain-wall behavior. © 2001 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.63.134433
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.63.134433
PACS:
05.70.Fh, 75.25.+z, 75.30.Cr, 75.60.-d
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