Neutron Scattering Study on Uniaxial-stress Effects on Frustrated Magnets

Abstract

We have investigated effects of uniaxial stress on frustrated magnets by means of neutron scattering experiment. In this article, we focus on a triangular lattice antiferromagnet CuFeO₂, which exhibits a strong spin-lattice coupling. We demonstrated uniaxial-stress control of electric polarization in a multiferroic phase of Ga-doped CuFeO₂. We also studied magnetic excitations in the collinear four-sublattice (4SL) antiferromagnetic ground state in undoped CuFeO₂ by means of inelastic neutron scattering measurements under uniaxial stress. We suggest that application of uniaxial-stress can be a useful tool to investigate geometrically frustrated spin systems, and can also induce novel cross-correlated phenomena in spin-lattice coupled systems.