Chiral-like critical behavior in the antiferromagnet cobalt glycerolate.
Critical exponents closely matching those of the N=2 chiral universality class have been obtained for the layered magnetic system cobalt glycerolate using muon spin relaxation. This class was originally introduced to represent geometrically frustrated triangular stacked-layer XY magnets with chiral noncollinear spin structures. Since the present magnetic system is a canted XY system without geometrical frustration or chiral degeneracy, the results indicate that the order parameter for canting in this system plays a similar role to the chiral order parameter in the geometrically frustrated systems, strongly suggesting that both types of noncollinear system share the same universality class.
ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.
F L
FL
Pratt
P J
PJ
Baker
S J
SJ
Blundell
T
T
Lancaster
M A
MA
Green
M
M
Kurmoo