The "devil's staircase" type phase transition in NaV2O5 under high pressure

The "devil's staircase" type phase transition in the quarter-filled spin-ladder compound NaV2O5 has been discovered at low temperature and high pressure by synchrotron radiation x-ray diffraction. A large number of transitions are found to successively take place among higher-order commensurate phases with 2a * 2b * zc type superstructures. The observed temperature and pressure dependence of modulation wave number qc, defined by 1/z, is well reproduced by the Axial Next Nearest Neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model. The qc is suggested to reflect atomic displacements coupled with charge ordering in this system. The experimental fact implies that two competitive inter-layer interactions between the Ising spins, i.e., the nearest neighbor J1>0 (ferro) and the next nearest neighbor J2<0 (antiferro) along the c-axis, are intrinsic in this compound. A microscopic origin of the inter-layer interaction is not yet known; however, the nearest neighbor interaction J1>0 between the V2O5 layers is especially interesting. It is very surprising that the phase transition of such a complicated charge-lattice-spin coupled system NaV2O5 can be described by the simple ANNNI model.