Magnetic field switching between the two orbital-ordered states in DyVO3

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Nov 23;99(21):217201. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.217201. Epub 2007 Nov 19.

Abstract

The critical phase competition between different spin-orbital-ordered states has been investigated for the DyVO3 single crystal. As temperature is lowered, the compound exhibits a reentrant spin and orbital ordering (SO and OO) transition: C-->G-->C type for SO and G-->C-->G type for OO. It was found that a magnetic field also drives the phase transition from C to G for OO and concomitantly from G to C for SO, the latter of which is coupled with the metamagnetic transition of the Dy 4f moments. The mechanism of this novel magnetic-field-induced orbital switching is discussed.