Low-temperature thermal conductivity (\kappa), as well as magnetization (M) and electric polarization (P), of multiferroic orthoferrite DyFeO_3 single crystals are studied with H \parallel c. When the crystal is cooled in zero field, M, P, and \kappa all consistently exhibit irreversible magnetic-field dependencies. In particular, with 500 mK < T \le 2 K, all these properties show two transitions at the first run of increasing field but only the higher-field transition is present in the subsequent field sweepings. Moreover, the ultra-low-T (T < 500 mK) \kappa(H) shows a different irreversibility and there is only one transition when the field is swept both up and down. All the results indicate a complex low-T H-T phase diagram involving successive magnetic phase transitions of the Fe^{3+} spins. In particular, the ground state, obtained with cooling to subKelvin temperatures in zero field, is found to be an unexplored phase.
@article{arxiv.1406.2194,
title = {Ground state and magnetic phase transitions of orthoferrite DyFeO_3},
author = {Z. Y. Zhao and X. Zhao and H. D. Zhou and F. B. Zhang and Q. J. Li and C. Fan and X. F. Sun and X. G. Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.2194},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
9 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B