Observation of a charge-neutral muon-polaron complex in antiferromagnetic Cr${}_2$O${}_3$

Abstract

We report a comprehensive muon spin rotation ($\mu$SR) study of the prototypical magnetoelectric antiferromagnet Cr${}_2$O${}_3$. We find the positively charged muon (${\mu }^{+}$) occupies several distinct interstitial sites, and displays a rich dynamic behavior involving local hopping, thermally activated site transitions and the formation of a charge-neutral complex composed of a muon and an electron polaron. The discovery of such a complex has implications for the interpretation of $\mu$SR spectra in a wide range of magnetic oxides, and opens a route to study the dopant characteristics of interstitial hydrogen impurities in such materials. We address implications arising from implanting a ${\mu }^{+}$ into a linear magnetoelectric, and discuss the challenges of observing a local magnetoelectric effect generated by the charge of the muon.

arXiv comment17 pages, 12 figures

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Royal Society Inaugural Article Perspective: Multiferroics Beyond Electric-Field Control of Magnetism
• DFT+μ: Density Functional Theory for Muon Site Determination
• Analogy between the magnetic dipole moment at the surface of a magnetoelectric and the electric charge at the surface of a ferroelectric
• Local Electronic Structure and Dynamics of Muon-Polaron Complexes in Fe${}_2$O${}_3$
• Ambipolar Property of Isolated Hydrogen in Oxide Materials Revealed by Muon
• Understanding muon diffusion in perovskite oxides below room temperature based on harmonic transition state theory
• Magnetostriction-Driven Muon Localization in an Antiferromagnetic Oxide
• Direct observation of oxygen polarization in Sr${}_2$IrO${}_4$ by O $K$-edge x-ray magnetic circular dichroism
• Complex spin-density-wave ordering in La${}_4$Ni${}_3$O${}_{10}$
• Automated computational workflows for muon spin spectroscopy
• Nano-scale dynamics of hydrogen in VO${}_2$ studied by $\mu$SR
• Local electronic structure of dilute hydrogen in $\beta$-MnO${}_2$
• Electron $g$-value comparison of paramagnetic muonium and hydrogen centers in rutile TiO${}_2$