Elastocaloric signatures of symmetric and antisymmetric strain-tuning of quadrupolar and magnetic phases in DyB2C2

Abstract

The adiabatic elastocaloric effect measures the temperature change of given systems with strain and probes the entropic landscape in the temperature-strain space. In this study we demonstrate that the DC bias strain-dependence of AC elastocaloric effect can be used to decompose the latter into contributions from symmetric (rotation-symmetry-preserving) and antisymmetric (rotation-symmetry-breaking) strains, using a tetragonal f-electron system DyB2C2--whose antiferroquadrupolar order locally breaks four-fold rotational site symmetries while globally remaining tetragonal--as a showcase example. We capture the strain evolution of the quadrupolar and magnetic phase transitions in the system using both singularities in the elastocaloric coefficient and its jump at the transitions, and the latter we show follows a modified Ehrenfest relation. We find that antisymmetric strain couples to the underlying order parameter in a bi-quadratic manner in the antiferroquadrupolar (AFQ) phase but in a linear-quadratic manner in the canted antiferromagnetic (CAFM) phase; the contrast is attributed to a preserved (broken) tetragonal symmetry in the AFQ (CAFM) phase, respectively. The broken tetragonal symmetry in the CAFM phase is further supported by elastocaloric strain-hysteresis and observation of two sets of domains with mutually perpendicular principal axes in optical birefringence. Additionally, when the quadrupolar moments are ordered in a staggered fashion, we uncover an elastocaloric response that reflects a quadratic increase of entropy with antisymmetric strain, analogous to the role magnetic field plays for Ising antiferromagnets by promoting pseudospin flips. Our results show that AC elastocaloric effect is a compact and incisive thermodynamic probe into the coupling between electronic degrees of freedom and strain, which can potentially be applied to broader classes of quantum materials.

10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Manifestations of nematic degrees of freedom in the magnetic, elastic, and superconducting properties of the iron pnictides
• Elastocaloric determination of the phase diagram of Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$
• Grüneisen parameter studies on heavy fermion quantum criticality
• Elastocaloric signature of nematic fluctuations
• Electronic nematicity in URu2Si2 revisited
• Elastocaloric signatures of symmetric and antisymmetric strain-tuning of quadrupolar and magnetic phases in DyB2C2
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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Symmetry-breaking pathway towards the unpinned broken helix
• Magnetic-field-tuned randomness in inhomogeneous altermagnets
• Elastic Quantum Criticality in Nematics and Altermagnets via the Elasto-Caloric Effect
• Realization of giant elastocaloric cooling at cryogenic temperatures in TmVO${}_4$ via a strain load/unload technique
• Probing multipolar order in the candidate altermagnet MnF${}_2$ through the elastocaloric effect under strain