paper

Electronic structure, magnetic and dielectric properties of the edge-sharing copper-oxide chain compound NaCuO

arXiv:0912.0168 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.81.085111

Abstract

We report an experimental study of \nco, a Mott insulator containing chains of edge-sharing CuO plaquettes, by polarized x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), resonant magnetic x-ray scattering (RMXS), magnetic susceptibility, and pyroelectric current measurements. The XAS data show that the valence holes reside exclusively on the Cu sites within the copper-oxide spin chains and populate a -orbital polarized within the CuO plaquettes. The RMXS measurements confirm the presence of incommensurate magnetic order below a Néel temperature of K, which was previously inferred from neutron powder diffraction and nuclear magnetic resonance data. In conjunction with the magnetic susceptibility and XAS data, they also demonstrate a new "orbital" selection rule for RMXS that is of general relevance for magnetic structure determinations by this technique. Dielectric property measurements reveal the absence of significant ferroelectric polarization below , which is in striking contrast to corresponding observations on the isostructural compound \lco. The results are discussed in the context of current theories of multiferroicity.

7 pages, 7 figures

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