1. Itinerant Antiferromagnetism in RuO_{2}.
- Author
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Berlijn T, Snijders PC, Delaire O, Zhou HD, Maier TA, Cao HB, Chi SX, Matsuda M, Wang Y, Koehler MR, Kent PR, and Weitering HH
- Abstract
Bulk rutile RuO_{2} has long been considered a Pauli paramagnet. Here we report that RuO_{2} exhibits a hitherto undetected lattice distortion below approximately 900 K. The distortion is accompanied by antiferromagnetic order up to at least 300 K with a small room temperature magnetic moment of approximately 0.05μ_{B} as evidenced by polarized neutron diffraction. Density functional theory plus U (DFT+U) calculations indicate that antiferromagnetism is favored even for small values of the Hubbard U of the order of 1 eV. The antiferromagnetism may be traced to a Fermi surface instability, lifting the band degeneracy imposed by the rutile crystal field. The combination of high Néel temperature and small itinerant moments make RuO_{2} unique among ruthenate compounds and among oxide materials in general.
- Published
- 2017
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