Internal and External Field Effects upon Crystal Field Excitations in REFeO$_3$ (RE = Nd$^{3+}$, Er$^{3+}$, Yb$^{3+}$, Pr$^{3+}$, and Ho$^{3+}$)

Guochu Deng

doi:10.1016/j.physb.2026.418310

paper

Internal and External Field Effects upon Crystal Field Excitations in REFeO $_{3}$ (RE = Nd $^{3 +}$ , Er $^{3 +}$ , Yb $^{3 +}$ , Pr $^{3 +}$ , and Ho $^{3 +}$ )

arXiv:2505.04976 · doi:10.1016/j.physb.2026.418310

Abstract

We systematically investigated crystal-field (CF) excitations of Kramers (Nd $^{3 +}$ , Er $^{3 +}$ , Yb $^{3 +}$ ) and non-Kramers (Pr $^{3 +}$ , Ho $^{3 +}$ ) rare-earth ions in $R E F e O_{3}$ using optimized CF simulations. Internal magnetic fields from the Fe $^{3 +}$ and RE $^{3 +}$ sublattices split the ground-state doublets of all Kramers ions (e.g. $N d F e O_{3}$ , $E r F e O_{3}$ , and $Y b F e O_{3}$ ), generating low-energy excitations around 1 meV. In non-Kramers systems, low-energy excitations arise only when the ground state forms an accidental pseudo-doublet, as observed for Ho $^{3 +}$ in $H o F e O_{3}$ ; such pseudo-doublets exhibit field-induced splitting analogous to Kramers ions. In contrast, true singlet ground states, exemplified by Pr $^{3 +}$ , show no zero-field splitting. Strong anisotropies are found in both internal- and external-field responses of the CF excitations in these $R E F e O_{3}$ . These results provide a unified explanation for the anomalous Zeeman splitting of CF ground states in $R E F e O_{3}$ .

arXiv commentAccepted author manuscript. Published in Physica B: Condensed Matter (2026). 30 figures in the main article, 12 figures in the supplemental materials

Internal and External Field Effects upon Crystal Field Excitations in REFeO3​ (RE = Nd3+, Er3+, Yb3+, Pr3+, and Ho3+)

Abstract

References in corpus (12)

Internal and External Field Effects upon Crystal Field Excitations in REFeO $_{3}$ (RE = Nd $^{3 +}$ , Er $^{3 +}$ , Yb $^{3 +}$ , Pr $^{3 +}$ , and Ho $^{3 +}$ )