Thermally-induced magnetic order from glassiness in elemental neodymium

Abstract

Temperature in thermodynamics is synonymous with disorder, and responsible for ultimately destroying ordered phases. Here, we show an unusual magnetic transition where, with increasing the temperature of elemental neodymium, long-range multi-Q magnetic order emerges from a self-induced spin glass. Using temperature-dependent spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy, we characterize the local Q order in the spin-Q glass phase and quantify the emergence of long-range multi-Q order with increasing temperature. We develop two distinct analysis tools, which enable the quantification of the glass transition temperature, based on measured spatially-dependent magnetization. We compare these observations with atomic spin dynamics simulations, which reproduce the qualitative observation of a phase transition from a low-temperature spin glass phase to an intermediate ordered multi-Q phase. These simulations trace the origin of the unexpected high temperature order in weakened frustration driven by temperature-dependent sublattice correlations. These findings constitute an example of order from disorder and provide a rich platform to study magnetization dynamics in a self-induced spin glass.

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Estimating Patterns of Classical and Quantum Skyrmion States
• Collective topological spin dynamics in a correlated spin glass
• Spin-dependent interactions in orbital-density-dependent functionals: non-collinear Koopmans spectral functionals
• Quantifying spatio-temporal patterns in classical and quantum systems out of equilibrium
• Genetic-tunneling driven energy optimizer for spin systems
• Frustrated magnets in the limit of infinite dimensions: dynamics and disorder-free glass transition
• Emergent topological quasiparticle kinetics in constricted nanomagnets