Spin Driven Jahn-Teller Distortion in a Pyrochlore system
Preprint
- 1 November 2000
Abstract
The ground-state properties of the spin-1 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the corner-sharing tetrahedra, pyrochlore lattice, is investigated. By breaking up each spin into a pair of 1/2-spins, the problem is reduced to the equivalent one of the spin-1/2 tetrahedral network in analogy with the valence bond solid state in one dimension. The twofold degeneracy of the spin-singlets of a tetrahedron is lifted by a Jahn-Teller mechanism, leading to a cubic to tetragonal structural transition. It is proposed that the present mechanism is responsible for the phase transition observed in the spin-1 spinel compounds ZnV$_2$O$_4$ and MgV$_2$O$_4$.Keywords
All Related Versions
- Version 1, 2000-11-01, ArXiv
- Published version: Physical Review Letters, 85 (23), 4960.
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