Strain control of a bandwidth-driven spin reorientation in Ca3Ru2O7.
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41714-8
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41714-8
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Acknowledgements: We thank Richard Thorogate for assistance with the resistivity measurements, Daniel Nye and Gavin Stenning for assistance with the powder x-ray diffraction and Laue alignment in the Materials Characterisation Laboratory at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Mike Matthews for technical support at I16, and Jacob Simms, Katherine Mordecai, Jon Bones and David Keymer for technical support at WISH. C.D.D. was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Doctoral Training in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials under Grant No. EP/L015277/1. A.H.W. was supported by the EPSRC under Grant No. EP/N509577/1. D.D.K. was supported by the EPSRC under Grant No. EP/W00562X/1. Work at UCL was supported by the EPSRC under Grants No. EP/W005786/1, EP/N027671/1, EP/P013449/1 and EP/N509577/1. Experiments at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source were supported by beamtime allocation RB1920210 from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. We acknowledge the Diamond Light Source for time on beamline I16 under proposals MM23580 and MM25554. We thank Institut Laue Langevin for access to the neutron diffractometer D9 under proposal EASY-951.
The layered-ruthenate family of materials possess an intricate interplay of structural, electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom that yields a plethora of delicately balanced ground states. This is exemplified by Ca3Ru2O7, which hosts a coupled transition in which the lattice parameters jump, the Fermi surface partially gaps and the spins undergo a 90∘ in-plane reorientation. Here, we show how the transition is driven by a lattice strain that tunes the electronic bandwidth. We apply uniaxial stress to single crystals of Ca3Ru2O7, using neutron and resonant x-ray scattering to simultaneously probe the structural and magnetic responses. These measurements demonstrate that the transition can be driven by externally induced strain, stimulating the development of a theoretical model in which an internal strain is generated self-consistently to lower the electronic energy. We understand the strain to act by modifying tilts and rotations of the RuO6 octahedra, which directly influences the nearest-neighbour hopping. Our results offer a blueprint for uncovering the driving force behind coupled phase transitions, as well as a route to controlling them.
The layered-ruthenate family of materials possess an intricate interplay of structural, electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom that yields a plethora of delicately balanced ground states. This is exemplified by Ca3Ru2O7, which hosts a coupled transition in which the lattice parameters jump, the Fermi surface partially gaps and the spins undergo a 90∘ in-plane reorientation. Here, we show how the transition is driven by a lattice strain that tunes the electronic bandwidth. We apply uniaxial stress to single crystals of Ca3Ru2O7, using neutron and resonant x-ray scattering to simultaneously probe the structural and magnetic responses. These measurements demonstrate that the transition can be driven by externally induced strain, stimulating the development of a theoretical model in which an internal strain is generated self-consistently to lower the electronic energy. We understand the strain to act by modifying tilts and rotations of the RuO6 octahedra, which directly influences the nearest-neighbour hopping. Our results offer a blueprint for uncovering the driving force behind coupled phase transitions, as well as a route to controlling them.