Canted magnetic ground state of quarter-doped manganites R 0.75Ca0.25MnO3 (R  =  Y, Tb, Dy, Ho, and Er)

Polycrystalline samples of the quarter-doped manganites R 0.75Ca0.25MnO3 (R = Y, Tb, Dy, Ho, and Er) were studied by x-ray diffraction and AC/DC susceptibility measurements. All five samples are orthorhombic and exhibit similar magnetic properties: enhanced ferromagnetism below T 1 (∼80 K) and a spin glass (SG) state below T SG (∼30 K). With increasing R 3+ ionic size, both T 1 and T SG generally increase. The single crystal neutron diffraction results on Tb0.75Ca0.25MnO3 revealed that the SG state is mainly composed of a short-range ordered version of a novel canted (i.e. noncollinear) antiferromagnetic spin state. Furthermore, calculations based on the double exchange model for quarter-doped manganites reveal that this new magnetic phase provides a transition state between the ferromagnetic state and the theoretically predicted spin-orthogonal stripe phase.