Short-Range Correlations in Magnetite above the Verwey Temperature

Abstract

Magnetite, Fe${}_3$O${}_4$, is the first magnetic material discovered and utilized by mankind in Ancient Greece, yet it still attracts attention due to its puzzling properties. This is largely due to the quest for a full and coherent understanding of the Verwey transition that occurs at $T_V=124$ K and is associated with a drop of electric conductivity and a complex structural phase transition. A recent detailed analysis of the structure, based on single crystal diffraction, suggests that the electron localization pattern contains linear three-Fe-site units, the so-called trimerons. Here we show that whatever the electron localization pattern is, it partially survives up to room temperature as short-range correlations in the high-temperature cubic phase, easily discernible by diffuse scattering. Additionally, {\it ab initio} electronic structure calculations reveal that characteristic features in these diffuse scattering patterns can be correlated with the Fermi surface topology.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Mechanism of the Verwey transition in magnetite
• Resonant X-ray diffraction studies on the charge ordering in magnetite
• Origin of the Verwey transition in magnetite: Group theory, electronic structure, and lattice dynamics study
• High-energy photoemission on Fe3O4: Small polaron physics and the Verwey transition

Cited by in corpus (8)

• The ab initio study of unconventional superconductivity in CeCoIn${}_5$ and FeSe
• Trimeron-phonon coupling in magnetite
• Oxidation State Dynamics and Emerging Patterns in Magnetite
• Charge order at magnetite Fe3O4(001): surface and Verwey phase transitions
• Electronic structure and polaronic charge distributions of Fe vacancy clusters in Fe${}_{1-x}$O
• Influence of isolated and clustered defects on electronic and dielectric properties of wustite
• Simultaneous mapping of the ultrafast time and fluence dependence of the laser-induced insulator-to-metal transition in magnetite
• Direct observation of Jahn-Teller critical dynamics at a charge-order Verwey transition