Dimensional crossover of a frustrated distorted kagome Heisenberg Model: Application to FeCrAs

Abstract

Motivated by recent experimental work on FeCrAs, we study the magnetic properties of classical spin models on the hexagonal Fe${}_2$P/ZrNiAl structure (space group $P\bar{6}2m$). When both transition metal/rare earth sites carry magnetic moments, one has alternating distorted kagome and triangular lattice layers. Each point of the triangular lattice lies at the centre of a distorted hexagon and actually corresponds to three isolated magnetic atoms: a "trimer". We show that a simple model consisting of antiferromagnetically correlated Heisenberg spins on the frustrated distorted kagome lattice coupling either ferromagnetically or antiferromagnetically to Heisenberg spins at the average position of a trimer, leads to a rich phase diagram, including the possible selection of a $(1/3,1/3,0)$ magnetic order as may have been seen in FeCrAs.

8 pages, 5 figures