Correlation between magnon and magnetic symmetries of hexagonal RMnO3 (R = Er, Ho, Lu)

Abstract

The correlation between the magnon scattering and the magnetic symmetries of hexagonal RMnO3 (R ¼ Er, Ho) thin films and LuMnO3 single crystal was studied through the 2D Correlation Spectroscopy 2D COS) and Perturbation-Correlation Moving Window 2D (PCMW2D) Correlation Spectroscopy which were performed on the temperature-dependent Raman spectra of RMnO3 (R ¼ Er, Ho, Lu). From the Raman spectra, we observed much stronger intensity and more asymmetrical magnon peak in LuMnO3 single crystal than in ErMnO3 and HoMnO3 thin films. While the ratio between magnon and phonon's linewidth of LuMnO3 and HoMnO3 display an anomalous behavior, that ratio of ErMnO3 is almost stable. The result from PCMW2D also supports these results. In addition, our 2D COS analysis showed that there are more overlap peaks in broad four-spin flipping magnon peak in LuMnO3 than that in ErMnO3 and HoMnO3. The differences of hexagonal RMnO3 (R ¼ Er, Ho, Lu) in magnon scattering are very similar to the actual differences of the magnetic symmetries of these compounds. Therefore, we suggest that the magnon scattering of hexagonal RMnO3 is strongly correlated with the magnetic symmetries of these materials. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.