Evidence has been found for a change in the ordered occupation of the vanadium d-orbitals at the 77K phase transition in YVO3, manifested by a change in the type of Jahn-Teller distortion. The orbital ordering above 77K is not destroyed at the magnetic ordering temperature of 116K, but is present as far as a second structural phase transition at 200K. The transition between orbital orderings is caused by an increase in octahedral tilting with decreasing temperature.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0109118,
title = {Transition between orbital orderings in YVO3},
author = {G. R. Blake and T. T. M. Palstra and Y. Ren and A. A. Nugroho and A. A. Menovsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0109118},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
7 pages, 5 figures, submitted in shortened form to Phys. Rev. Lett