Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kobayashi, T C
• Nomura, T
• Matsuda, Y H
• Her, J L
• Takeyama, S
• Matsuo, A
• Kindo, K

Titel

Emergence of novel phase of solid oxygen in ultrahigh magnetic Held

Ist Teil von

• Journal of physics. Conference series, 2014-12, Vol.568 (4), p.42018

Ort / Verlag

Bristol: IOP Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Faraday discovered the magnetism of molecular oxygen in 1850, and since then, oxygen has attracted significant interests as a ubiquitous but exotic molecular magnet. In solid oxygen, the magnetic energy through the exchange interaction is comparable to the van der Waals cohesive energy, resulting in a strong spin-lattice correlation. We reported the discovery of a magnetic-field-induced phase transition of solid oxygen using ultrahigh magnetic fields up to 186 T. This is the first experiments demonstrating the phase control through the spin by applying a magnetic field. Magneto-optical absorption measurements of the α phase at low temperatures revealed that visible light absorption suddenly ceases and the background transparency dramatically improves above the critical field. The large hysteresis in these data indicates a first-order transition with a relaxation time on the order of microseconds. The results strongly suggest the reconstruction of the O2 molecular geometry by the magnetic field, which causes that the antiferromagnetic phase collapses and the field-induced phase should have an isotropic crystal structure. Since all of the known phases of O2 are induced in high pressure, the discovery of a field-induced phase is noteworthy in the long history of solid O2 studies.