Here we show that the low temperature phase of magnetite is associated with an effective, although fractional, ordering of the charge. Evidence and a quantitative evaluation of the atomic charges are achieved by using resonant x-ray diffraction (RXD) experiments whose results are further analyzed with the help of ab initio calculations of the scattering factors involved. By confirming the results obtained from X-ray crystallography we have shown that RXD is able to probe quantitatively the electronic structure in very complex oxides, whose importance covers a wide domain of applications.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0606596,
title = {Resonant X-ray diffraction studies on the charge ordering in magnetite},
author = {E. Nazarenko and J. E. Lorenzo and Y. Joly and J. L. Hodeau and D. Mannix and C. Marin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0606596},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages 4 figures, accepted for publication in PRL